^LIBRARY OF CONFESS. I 

# 

^UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. | 

■a 



^£rm0its* 




£^i^u^^,jy^. .2^7 



DISCOURSES, 



g0ttrinal ani frattical 






BY 







EDWARD N. KIRK, D.D, 



BOSTON. 

S. K. WHIPPLE AND COMPANY 

161 Washington Street. 

1857. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 

S. K. WHIPPLE & CO., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



Stereotyped by 

HOBART & ROBBINS, 

New England Type and Stereotype Foundery, 

BOSTON. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. GOD'S LOVE TO MAX 7 

II. THE PRIMITIVE GLORY OF CHRIST 23 

IIL CHRIST'S DEATH THE ONLY ATONEMENT FOR SIN. . . 39 

IV. THE MIRACLES 55 

V. CHRIST A PREACHER 73 

VI. JESUS, THE GREAT MISSIONARY 94 

VII. OUR SANCTIFICATION . 120 

VIIL EFFECTUAL PRAYER 135 

IX. PARENTAL SOLICITUDE 154 

X. CHILDHOOD PRAISING THE LORD 168 

XL FASTING 185 

XII. PAUL'S REVIEW OF HIS LIFE 199 

Xin. GLORY IN RESERVE 210 

1* 



I. 

GOD'S LOVE TO MAN. 



"OJe lobe f)tm because ^e first lobcli us." — 1 John 4: 19. 

To many it seems that perfect amiableness and goodness 
in our Creator requires him to look with entire approbation 
and indulgence upon them, without regard to the princi- 
ples upon which they are acting ; whether holy or un- 
holy. And yet some of this very class of persons, when 
brought to a more intimate acquaintance with themselves, 
and to a higher conception of what they ought to be, see that 
a holy God must hate them ; and, if he hates them, they 
cannot imagine that he loves them at the same time. Here 
are the two extremes of error ; one of which, probably, man- 
kind generally regard as truth. 

It is to one of these errors your attention is now called. 
I will, therefore, assume here that God abhors the natural 
character of man, because it is selfish and ungodly. As 
Paul said to the converted Ephesians, so he would say, under 
divine inspiration, to all good men , " Ye were by nature the 
children of wrath, even as others." Paul himself, so faithful 



8 • SERMONS. 

a servant of Christ, so beloved of God, was once a persecutor, 
a fierce bigot, filled with self-righteousness and hatred of 
good men. If any of us is approved of God, it is not because 
we were naturally so good that a holy Creator must approve 
of us. On the contrary, our hearts and our lives were 
wholly offensive to him. Leaving, then, that erroneous 
extreme, I propose to take up the other, into which they 
fall who begin to know their true character in the sight of 
God, and then to confound his hatred of their character with 
an indifierence to their happiness. 

And, as there is so much want of a clear discrimination on 
this subject, I must begin with proving that 

I. God can hate and love the same person at 
THE same moment. — It is shown in 

1. The very nature of benevolence. — What is a good 
man ? Try him by a case of this kind. He knows a man 
who is addicted to intemperance ; and who, in his paroxysms, 
abuses his family. How does this good man regard the 
case ? He abhors the drunkard's character and conduct ; 
yet he loves and pities the man. If the man can be re- 
claimed, and made a good man, he will rejoice ; nay, he 
will do whatever he can consistently do to bring it about. 
Now, he would not be a good man if he had not both these 
classes of feelings in the case. And thus God exhibits him- 
self to us as a holy God. He abhors all our sins ; he calls 
our hearts "deceitful, and desperately wicked." He threat- 
ens us with eternal destruction ; and yet, while we were still 
enemies, he gave his Son to die for us. Look, then, at the 



god's love to man. 9 

2. Scriptural representation of God's feelings towards 
the children of men. — Notice first the case of those who 
murdered Christ. None can doubt that they were most 
hateful to God. And yet the dying Son, who fully repre- 
sented his Father's feelings, regarded them as deserving the 
wrath of God at the same time he prayed for their forgive- 
ness. And was that prayer ineffectual? No; for, on the 
day of Pentecost, within less than a fortnight after the mur- 
derous deed was done, a servant of Christ is commissioned to 
go and charge upon them their crime ; not to condemn them, 
but to bring them to repentance. And then the Holy Spirit 
descends to bring them to exercise repentance ; and some of 
them, at least, are forgiven. 

Take, too, the case of Saul, breathing out threatenings and 
slaughter against the flock of Christ. Surely, the good Shep- 
herd must abhor his blood-thirsty cruelty. And yet he meets 
him in mercy, to bring him to a better mind. 

Then look abroad upon a world lying in wickedness, some- 
times as great as that which brought the deluge of water on 
the world, or that of fire on Sodom. But he sendeth his 
rain upon the thankful and the unthankful. "What does 
every gentle drop proclaim, as it falls upon the field of the 
ungodly man? Hear it tell its own story : " I come to thee, 
0, son of man, from thy heavenly Father. He is gi'ieved at 
thy ingratitude ; but he sent me to fall upon thy field, and 
bless it. I came, one of an innumerable band, to make thy 
grass and corn grow for thy nourishment. He loves thee, 
"while thou art grieving him. It was not wrath ; it was not 



10 SERMONS. 

the desire to keep up a cold, mechanical regularity of seasons 
that induced him to send me. It was love ; love to his 
enemy, whom he would fain make a friend." 

Having, then, clearly settled it in our minds that God may 
love and hate us at the same time, let us proceed to notice 
that 

II. God does love all men.— It is seen in 

1. The very act of creation. — We can imagine nothing 
but a generous, disinterested desire of sharing with other 
beings the happiness of existence, that induced Him to 
create what is to our apprehension an infinite universe of 
happy creatures, possessed of merely animal sensibilities. No 
one can think of them for a moment, and of the fact that his 
will alone gave them existence, without being deeply im- 
pressed by it as a manifestation of the pure and generous dis- 
position of their Creator. He surely is in no way depend- 
ent on any or all of them. Nothing but a spirit of the most 
disinterested and gentle kindness would, for instance, have 
colonized every leaf of every shrub in the field, and of every 
tree in the vast forest, with an empire of living creatures, 
all revelling in existence. Air, water, earth, is full of life; 
happy, beautiful life. The sum of their capacities for enjoy- 
ment is beyond all human powers of calculation. And he 
who endowed his creatures with so much ability to enjoy, 
surely delights in their happiness. 

All this, however, is only a partial display of creative 
power and of divine goodness ; for that reserved its great exer- 
cise and manifestation, until earth had become a paradise. 



god's love to man. 11 

God loves the plants, and shows it by caring and providing 
for their well-being. He loves the birds, the beasts, and 
the creeping thing. But none of them wears his paternal 
image ; none is called his son. The fulness of divine love 
was reserved to express itself in the formation of a creature 
that should link all creation together, and all creation to God 
himself 

What endowments has he bestowed on man ! He has 
given him a material organism, the crowned head of all other 
material structures ; an animal system placed in the throne of 
the animal universe ; a soul like the angels', like God ! Fel- 
low-men, love gave us this frame, this soul, this position, this 
mysterious sympathy with matter and mind, with the animal 
and the angelic race ; linked us by such ties at once to 
brutes, seraphs, God, earth, heaven, space, suns, planets, 
time, and eternity. All that lies locked up within these 
souls, to be unfolded in an endless duration, to expand under 
the growing splendors of divine tuition, of personal activity, 
of divine illuminations, manifestations, creations, and dispen- 
sations ; amid hierarchies, princes of heaven, celestial con- 
ferences, mighty enterprises, vast researches, growing joys, 
enhancing treasures of thought and memory and aifection ; for 
ever, and ever, and ever, without decay, without alloy, without 
interruption, without cessation ; this, brethren, this love gave 
us ! But we need not now carry the enumeration any 
further. Every human being, whatever his outward lot, 
may see within himself this pledge of his Creator's love to 
.himself and to others ; the countless arrangements and endow- 



12 SERMONS. 

ments that look to man's expansion, progress, and ultimate 
perfection, are so many demonstrations that " he first loved 
us," even before we were capable of loving him. We may 
see that man as man, as a race, is the object of a high degree 
of his Creator's regard. 

And then each member of the race may bring it home to 
his own heart, and realize in himself the evidences that he 
is personally the object of that love. It would be a mock- 
ery, were it general, and not special. " He loves me," may 
every one say — should every one say. And when we pass 
from our general endowments as rational, moral, social beings, 
to the particular histories of our individual lives, we find 
overwhelming evidence that God's goodness is unwearied, 
inexhaustible, gentle, minute, and personal. There is an 
eye that has never slumbered since we had a being ; and its 
tender regard has never passed away from either of us; 
there is a hand that has nurtured, and guided, and guarded 
us ; there is a heart that has loved us with a divine goodness 
and compassion. 

It is further seen in 

2. Forming a moral government for man. — Had he 
not regarded our welfare, he would not have placed us 
under the checks and balances and controlling power of gov- 
ernment. But the closest study of our mental constitution 
as individuals, and of our wants as social beings, with an 
examination of God's moral government, will reveal his great 
regard for our individual welfare, and for the happiness of 
our race. And the laws under which he has placed us all 



god's love to man. 13 

aim at our personal perfection, and the highest degree and 
form of happiness of which we are capable. 

But the crowning proof of God's love 

3. Is in Christ and redemption. — "God so loved the 
world that he gave his onlj begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 
Herein is love ; not that we loved God, but that he loved us, 
and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." What 
was it but a desire to promote our welfare that led to all 
this arrangement, — this condescension, patience, ignominy, 
sujQfering, and death. 

Pause, fellow-sinner, fellow-man, before that wonderful 
being that you iBnd now in the manger, now on the cross ; 
follow his wonderful footsteps ; dwell on his words ; hear his 
prayers ; gaze on his tears, nay, on his flowing blood, until 
you fully and firmly believe, never to doubt it, or forget that 
God loves us when we do not love him. Then follow out 
all the history of his mission, tracing it down to this moment 
when you are sitting here, feeling the power of all those 
influences by which he is urging you to repentance, and 
drawing you to himself. 

What, then, should be the efiect of this great fact, in our 
experience ? 

III. Every human being should love him. 

This is not the place to urge his claims to our benevolence, 

because that claim is founded on his capacity for happiness. 

Benevolence is wishing well to another ; wishing the best ; and 

sa wishing as to make any personal sacrifice for the greater 

2 



14 SERMONS. 

good of others. We ought to wish well to the least insect 
that creeps. And so we should ascend, the scale of being, 
esteeming the happiness of each as more and more important, 
until we reach the eternal throne. And the*blessedness of him 
who occupies it should be the object of our supreme desire. 

But the passage we are considering looks in other direc- 
tions. Observing God's benevolent regard to us, it declares 
that good men are led by that to love God. In other words, 
the benevolence of God claims our admiration, complacency, 
and gratitude. I use these terms in their highest and most 
reverential sense, to express the most reverential delight in 
God, as he exhibits this infinitely amiable character, as well 
as the profoundest feeling of indebtedness. 

It will be found, on reflection, that, however these senti- 
ments may be promoted by a general contemplation of God's 
benevolence to all men, it is in regarding ourselves as its 
objects that we get peculiar impressions, and a peculiar 
impulse to love him. 

It is in ourselves we discover most fully the disparity 
between God and a creature. There is that in consciousness 
which cannot be in observation. In one's self one discovers 
most fully the ignorance, the feebleness of a creature ; how 
poor, how dependent, how unable to return anything to God 
but its poor love. And it is in that profounder study of our 
littleness, that we discover this great fact. God has created 
beings who, while they partake of his own spiritual nature, 
and can see in themselves in miniature his spiritual faculties 
and susceptibilities, at the same time are directly contrasted 



god's love to man. 15 

with him in feebleness and absolute dependence. And when 
this point shall come to be fully understood by men, then 
the great typical meaning of the conjugal relation will be 
understood, and the tenderness, as well as awful force, of 
those passages which compare all sin toward God to conjugal 
infidelity, will be seen. 

We are not companions fit to entertain a being of infinite 
intelligence. He can derive no benefit from us. Nothing, 
then, but a most pure and disinterested benevolence, can 
induce him to take so much interest in a poor, ignorant, 
feeble creature, like me. My wants drive me to him ; but 
his fulness draws him to me. He loves to communicate, and 
he has therefore created me capable of appreciating my wants 
and his fulness, my insignificance and his greatness. I can 
know my dependence, and I can appreciate his goodness, as 
no other kind of creature around me, but man, can do. He 
wanted to have a heart like mine to receive his blessings and 
appreciate his kindness. He made me with vast interests 
and responsibilities ; enough to crush me, if I go alone to my 
conflicts and my toils. But he wants me to lean on him ; to 
make his fulness the correlative of my poverty, his power the 
complement of my weakness, his wisdom the complement of 
my ignorance. 0, wonderful goodness ! And have I so 
failed to understand and appreciate it ? Forgive me, Father ! 
Yes, I am to become disinterested in my love. But I get 
the first lesson by going apart from men to study God's 
wondrous love to me. It is wonderful to me that he loves 
other men; but most wonderful that he loves me. And 



16 SERMONS. 

when I go forth, thus instructed and impressed, from this 
personal communion, to contemplate his love to all my fellow- 
men, then my admiration grows and expands, and my heart 
is drawn out to love men, as my Father and their Father 
loves them. I turn to the Gospel, and there I see divine 
goodness taking on the robes of humanity, tabernacling among 
us, espousing our race, becoming "bone of our bone, and 
flesh of our flesh." Here love "puts on its divinest form." 
Once it appeared in creating power, calling into being shining 
suns, and floating worlds, and glorious angels, and a universe 
of hymning voices. Then it appeared in the gentleness of its 
paternal care, watching over all this happy family ; clothing 
all, feeding all, teaching all, blessing all. But now it appears 
in a new form — to redeem a lost race ! Here it comes forth 
with a condescension that astounds the hierarchies of heaven, 
and stirs the deepest envy of all the malignant enemies of 
God. His name is " Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, 
the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." And yet, at 
the same time, he is born to one of our race, as a son ! And 
every child of Adam may say, he became incarnate for me. 
And when he had become man, then he still humbled himself. 
He went about doing good. Love, love is in every look, 
every word, every step, every action. I hear him comforting 
the afllicted, warning the wicked, calling the dead to life. I 
see him stop at the cry of a blind beggar ; I see gathering 
around him the miserable, seeking sympathy and relief, and 
grateful beneficiaries praising his goodness. He has malig- 
nant enemies seeking his life. Eut it is not for himself he 



god's love to man. 17 

cares. His body-guard is made up of lepers, cripples, blind 
men, penitent sinners, broken-hearted mothers. 0, Prince 
of Peace ! who can behold thy wondrous march through a 
world over which heroes have strutted in their pride and 
cruelty, and not be filled with admiration ! 

And not only condescension and pity marked this mani- 
festation of the Deity, but also self-sacrifice. Forbearance 
and gentleness toward the imperfections and errors of his 
disciples fill the soul with wonder. But in his laboriousness, 
his endurance of every form of evil, consummated by bearing 
our sins in his own body on the tree ; going like a sheep, 
silent to the shearing, and like a lamb, dumb to the slaughter; 
there we see love. He bore reproach, insult, cruelty, and 
mockery, without hatred or revenge, and then he took from 
the Father's hand the cup that held the curse ; and he drank 
it for us ! 

We love him because he first loved us. He went to the 
depth of the abyss. He could go no lower. He paid the 
full debt. He conquered the last foe ; he opened the remotest 
prison-door. He made salvation possible for all. Then he 
arose, because the work of love could now be completed in 
heaven. I know not where that is, relatively to space. 
Wherever he is, it is ; and there he is interceding, and in 
his place he sends another paraclete or helper. 

" Herein is love ; not that we loved God, but that he loved 

us." And, to crown the proof of his love, he seeks ours in 

return. That completes the evidence of his regard for us, 

and binds us to love him in return. He requires us both to 

2* 



18 SERMONS. 

be grateful for his kindness, and to enter into fellowship and 
communion with him ; and, as children, to reciprocate God's 
love. This is, in pai't, what our Saviour intended in the 
declaration, " Except ye be converted, and become as little 
children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven," 
We are not to become less loving, less confiding, as we grow 
older, but more so. And as a growing knowledge of men 
makes complacency and confidence in them more difficult, we 
must exercise them the more fully on God. "Abba, Father," 
is the lesson, the great lesson, that lies at the starting-place 
of wisdom. We ought to love him as a savior. He has 
redeemed us by taking to himself our nature, and dying in our 
stead. To him our souls should go forth, in the full strength 
of their afiections. Love him as a pardoning God. It is he 
that "blotteth out all thine iniquities." The moment you 
repent, lying at his feet, no longer desiring to disobey, but 
to obey and love him, he will accept you, and would have 
you love him as a pardoning God. You see how Christ lived 
with his disciples when he was on earth. You see how God 
dealt with Moses and Abraham. You see what tenderness 
was in John's love: what ardor in Peter's; what energy in 
Paul's. These are your models and your encouragement. 

This subject explains to us the reasons of the strange 
fact^ that men doubt whether God loves them. — At the 
first glance it would seem as if every human being would 
rather believe without evidence that God loves him, than 
deny it against evidence. But it is not so ; and the reason 
of it can be shown. In certain aspects it is very agreeable 



god's love to men. 19 

to believe that God loves us ; but the heart catches a glimpse 
of certain consequences that make it more horrible to believe 
that God loves us, than to believe that he is indifferent to us, 
or even that he cruelly hates us. 

It is the very essence of impenitence to be self-complacent, 
satisfied with self So long as the impenitent heart, therefore, 
can confound the benevolence of God with his complacency, 
it will believe in his love to us, for that flatters our pride. 
If God loves me, then I am lovely, is its false reasoning. 
The answer is, no ; he may love and hate you at the same 
time, as you would an ungrateful child ; but, when the dis- 
tinction becomes clear, the effect is tremendous. God's love 
is then seen to be only benevolence toward them, and to con- 
sist with contempt for their character. It is only pity, 
which a proud heart spurns. This distinction makes their 
character appear in all its vileness. And it furnishes no 
security that God will ever make them happy ; much as he 
may desire it. The same obstacle that prevents their being 
made holy will forever prevent their being made happy. No 
man can bear the sight of his own heart as refusing to love 
an infinitely amiable being. It is a horrible thing to disobey 
him who loves us so. They must, therefore, take one of three 
courses : repent and love him, or believe they do love him, 
or believe he does not love them. To see him loving them 
strips the soul of every excuse and plea for not loving him. 
Hence come the efforts to think of God as at a great dis- 
tance, as indifferent, even cruel. This is all a natural con- 
sequence of impenitence ; for a man gladly hears and readily 



20 SERMONS. 

believes evil reports concerning one whom he is conscious of 
injuring. But this leads me to remark again that, 

It is as wicked and inexcusahle to doubt God^s benev- 
olence to the impenitent as it is to believe his comjila- 
cency to them. — Satan plajs a sad game with the human 
heart here ; now holding it in the delusion that God is not 
angry with it ; then, as soon as God's anger is discerned, his 
benevolence is doubted. And thus we find the kindness of 
God so confounded in men's minds with his complacency, 
that while they believe in his benevolence it injures them, 
because they think it is complacency ; and when they begin 
to doubt his complacency, and need the belief of his kindness, 
then that is swept away in the same torrent with their false 
security. But it is wicked, against all that God has done 
to show his kindness, still to doubt it. Unbelief is never 
excused by God. 

// is also wicked and inexcusable to set God's benevo- 
lence against his justice and veracity. — Many do. God 
has declared he will punish the wicked after death, and with 
everlasting punishment. Against this men set his goodness. 
If they would so believe his goodness as to repent and serve 
him, it would be legitimate. But who can measure the 
wickedness of remaining impenitent against that goodness, 
and then reasoning from it to comfort the soul in rebellion ? 

It is also wicked and inexcusable not to love God. — 
There is no point our great adversary labors more to secure, 
than to prevent our seeing God's amiableness, kindness, be- 
neficence, and favors to us ; the consequent claims he has on 



god's love to men. 21 

us, the blessedness of loving him, the falseness of any other 
happiness ; the utter wickedness, inexcusableness, and desper- 
ateness, of refusing to love him. Sometimes our unbelief 
pleads the invisibility and silence of God. "Why does he 
jiot come here now ? " But he is here now. Sometimes he 
is said to be " unapproachable." This is not true. Or, he 
is thought to be " indifferent to us ; " but without reason. 
Or, it is said, " I cannot love him." This is equally untrue, 
as urged in excuse. If an ungrateful child tells you he can- 
not love you, his father, you do not admit his plea. You 
must, then, repent of not loving God. Repent of that conflict 
which your wickedness causes in his heart between benevo- 
lence and holiness ; which finds its utterance in this affect- 
ing appeal : " How shall I give thee up ? " 

A refusal to believe that God loves us is the unbelief 
which destroys the sold. — ''He that believeth not shall be 
damned." It involves a vindication of all former sins ; a love 
of the sinful state ; and a purpose to persevere in it. It is a 
distinct, unvaried refusal to accept all the wonderful provision 
of divine mercy for our restoration to holiness ; always con- 
cealing its deformity from the eye of the conscience, by some 
vain plea or excuse. Unbelief justifies the soul's impeni- 
tence, virtually declaring, in unspoken words, that " the Lord 
our God is not amiable ; that he is a great abstraction, out of 
the range of man's sympathy." It prevents repentance for 
sinning against him, by representing him as worthy of hatred. 
And to effect this, it accumulates prejudices against him. 
This is its language : "Is not there a great deal of evil in 
the world which God would prevent if he were as amiable as 



22 SERMONS. 

I am ? Would he not more fully gratify my wishes if he 
were good ? My lot is very hard. I have tried to repent, 
and I have prayed, and done all that I could, but in vain." 
Unbelief keeps the heart out of the range of those views of 
God's truth and love, which would melt it in penitential sor- 
row at a Saviour's feet. Whose heart can lie unmoved beneath 
the beams that stream so gently, but so powerfully, from the 
mysterious cross, which holds that mysterious sufferer? 
. Unbelief cherishes opposition to the divine mercy. For 
the method of that mercy is, to overwhelm us with a sense 
of our wickedness ; to draw us to God by a sense of our abso- 
lute dependence and unworthiness. His goodness requires 
severe methods with our strange malady. But these an 
unbelieving heart hates and refuses. Unbelief prevents our 
loving God, by hiding from us the evidence of his love to us. 
And thus it fortifies itself; for, the instant we believe just 
what is true in the case, we must turn and flee to his bosom 
as an altar of mercy, as our hiding-place from the tempest, as 
our eternal rest. And thus it prevents God from forgiving 
us, and from having complacency in us. Hear, ye children 
of men : God, your heavenly father, so good, so amiable, so 
abounding in mercy, can never delight in you until you come 
to him as sinners, depraved, guilty, lost, and helpless, and 
begin to trust him as the Saviour of sinners. Dread, there- 
fore, and abandon that unbelief which now binds you as a 
chain to your present dreary position of alienation : for you 
are "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers 
from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without 
God in the world." 



II. 

THE PRIMITIVE GLORY OF CHRIST. 



"anU notu, © J'atf)£r! slorifg tf)ou me ioit^ tf)tne oian gelf, iuttfj tfjc 
glorg bif)icf) E f)atj init]^ tfjee before tf)e fcorlti iuas."— John 17: 5. 

If you had seen and heard the Son of God offering this 
prayer, what would have been your thoughts and emotions ? 
Would it have surprised you to hear words which had more 
than an earthly meaning ? The outpouring of his soul in 
communing with his heavenly Father must contain mysteries, 
if it correspond with his origin, his life, and his mission. 

Some persons have tried to bring down the experience of 
Christ to that of a mere man. But, if they should succeed 
in this, then language would cease to be of any value ; and 
honesty could not be one of his virtues, for he laid claim to 
an experience that neither men nor angels have. If any one 
believes that Christ, in using the expressions before us, had 
no other consciousness than that of man, they must abandon 
the Bible. This utterance is among the wonders of redemp- 
tion. It is neither that of man, angel, or God ; but of God- 
man. If he were only man, he could not say that he had 
a glory with the Father before any creature had an exist- 



24 SERMONS. 

ence ; nor could any angel say it — not the loftiest which 
Omnipotence ever made. If he were only divine, he could 
not utter a prayer which a man could use as his own ; and 
yet it was undoubtedly from human lips this prayer pro- 
ceeded. 

The passage is one of those which bring to our view the 
three stages of Christ's existence : his estate of glory, his 
estate of humiliation, and his estate of glory resumed. We 
consider 

I. His primitive estate. — His prayer distinctly men- 
tions a glorious condition once enjoyed ; and refers it to a 
period before creation had taken place, when no being but 
God existed. Some say God was alone from all eternity ; 
and, of course, in that sense, solitary. Now, when they 
speak of the embarrassment of contemplating God in a plu- 
rality of persons, they speak only of their own experience ; 
and urge that as a reason why the doctrine of plurality of 
persons in the Godhead should be discarded. But we can pre- 
sent an embarrassment from our feelings equally great. If we 
must compare God with ourselves, then we cannot separate 
from their view of his unity an awful solitude, a loneliness 
which is to us horrible. If it is replied. You must not com- 
pare the Deity with us in his unity. — Precisely ; that is our 
view. We judge him by his own description, and not by 
our consciousness. The Bible represents three beings as 
God. They are called by different names, as distinguished 
from each other ; but all are the one God. Christ meets our 
feelings in this matter when he utters, in this wonderful 



THE PRIMITIVE GLORY OF CHRIST. 25 

prayer, the expression to his Father, 'Tor thou lovedst me 
before the foundation of the world." Glory is a term of 
wide extent. It may refer either to that which strikes the 
eye of a spectator as admirable, or to that which would, if it 
were seen. Both are included here. We are now trans- 
ported to a period full of mystery to the human understand- 
ing ; and every description of what existed then must be 
mysterious. You say, you will not believe the Trinity, 
because it is mysterious. Come, then, let us contemplate 
God in his unity, before creation, before time. Where are 
you now, with your feeble understanding ? Does no mystery 
meet you ? Yes ; all is mysterious ; that is, unlike the 
objects of our ordinary contemplation. We have, in our 
own intellectual and moral being, a basis on which to raise 
the conception of Deity ; but we are mistaken, if we think 
it is very broad or very deep. And we shall never know 
God, if we make our preconceptions the standard to try his 
teachings. 

Brethren, the Deity was not revealed to gratify our curi- 
osity, nor to increase our pride of intellect ; but to bring us 
into relations of affection, submission, and communion, with 
him. 

Some say he existed from all eternity, in absolute unity, 
both of essence, consciousness, and affection. But the Scrip- 
tures will not bear that out. Jesus Christ lays claim to a 
participation in that existence, consciousness, and affection, 
which he here calls glory. And it is associated, or social 
glory; or a glory shared by one that could say I, with one to 
3 



26 SERMOJy^S. 

whom he could say, Thou. " In the beginning the Word was 
with God, and the Word was God; " "the glory I had with 
thee." This is the glory which existed before any creature 
existed to behold it. But, when intelligent creatures came 
on the stage, they began to study it ; and they will forever 
increase their adoration of this uncreated, independent, and 
infinite Divine excellence. 
But, more specifically : 

1. The 'primitive state of Christ was that of unity iii 
essence with the Father. — There is but one God, On this 
the Father insists — the Son insists. The person of the Son 
is as really in that essence, as the person of the Father. You 
say you do not understand it. I am not explaining it to your 
understanding. I am showing you what Christ has deemed 
it important for us to know, with all the obscurity that is 
inherent in it. 

2. That unity admits of a distinct personality from, 
that of the Father. — The person called the Son, has all of 
Godhead that the person called the Father, has. But he is 
not the Father. 

3. He had the same glory as the Father. — Now we 
emerge into a little clearer region. That is ; all is obscure, 
though glorious, previous to the act of creation ; but, when 
that begins, we begin to see, at least, less obscurely. It is 
often affirmed in the Scriptures that the Father is invisible ; 
that he is made known only by the Son. Hence this person 
of the Godhead is called the Word, since a word brings to our 
apprehension a thought, an action, a quality of the soul that 



THE PRIMITIVE GLORY OF CHRIST. 27 

before was utterly concealed from us. The creating person 
of the Godhead is the Son. " By him everything was made 
that was made." We know not, then, a glorious attribute in 
the Godhead that is not manifested in creating and governing 
the universe. The Son appears the Creator, bringing out his 
own perfections, and those of the Father, in creation. Then 
comes redemption ; and then, under redemption, comes the 
election of the Jewish race ; and then the higher election of 
the true church of that and every period. 

Here is, then, glory which the Son of God had before the 
world was ; and we now are called to see him lay it aside. 

11. The humiliated state is now before us. — You 
will recall, that Jesus, the Son of Mary, was now engaged in 
prayer to the being whom he calls Father. You will recol- 
lect that he addresses him in a way that we know would be 
blasphemy in us. How, for instance, could any of us ask 
the Father to glorify us with a glory which we had with him 
before the world was ? He speaks of a glory not now pos- 
sessed. 

1. What, then, icas his hiimiUated state? — It was 
the presentation to the world of the infinite majesty of his 
Godhead veiled in a human person ; and of that perfect and 
glorious manhood in the lowest possible form compatible with 
holiness. " The Word was made flesh." The infinite entered 
the finite ; the invisible took the visible form of man. In 
so doing, he assumed a position inferior to both the Father 
and the angels. So we are told that he who " thought it not 
robbery to be equal with God" (the Father) "was made in the 



28 SERMONS. 

likeness of man." Th'e first consequence was, that, although 
he came to his own ; the very people who had known him as 
their Creator, by the writings of Moses, — the very people 
whom he had chosen, nurtured, instructed, redeemed, and 
blessed above all people, — when he came, they ^Y0uld not 
recognize his Godhead. The glory he had with the Father, 
before the world was. they denied to him. Here was the 
Jehovah who appeared to Abraham, and made promise of all 
the glory Israel should possess ; here was the Jehovah who 
appeared to Moses in the burning bush, in Egypt, at the Red 
Sea, in the wilderness ; but they knew him not. They said, 
'' It is the carpenter's son ; " and, " he blaspheme th," because 
he saith he is the Son of God. The glory he had before cre- 
ation, and the glory of all the history of creation, providence, 
and redemption, was hidden to unbelieving eyes. Man says, 
in unbelief, if the eternal Son of God stoops to save us by 
appearing in our very nature, we will despise him ; we have 
a philosophy that will affirm the intrinsic impossibility of the 
thing. And, if we give him credit for great excellence as a 
man, it will be by a tacit compromise that he is a liar : not 
really meaning what he affirmed about his existence before 
his birth. Or, if some of us cannot go so far as that, we will 
allow him to be a kind of angel incarnate. Thus Judaism, 
Mohammedism, Arianism, Socinianism, Unitarianism, and 
Rationalism, are all so many organized systems of contempt 
toward Christ ; the most severe contempt being constructively 
found in extolling him as a Saviour, while his high and glo- 
rious pretensions are denied ; thus, both making him only a 



THE PRIMITIVE GLORY OF CHRIST. 29 

creature, and the most blasphemous of impostors. There is 
no middle ground on this subject. Nothing ever could be 
more preposterous than the attempt to shade off the distinc- 
tion between acknowledging and denying Christ's Godhead. 
But to this he knowingly submitted ; and thus abased himself 
as God, below the Father and the angels. As man, too, he 
took a low place. It was man in his moral perfection, he 
took for his inferior nature ; but it was man in an exterior 
debased in the eye of unbelief He was born as a sinner, 
though not a sinner. His mother was a sinner, with us all. 
She was poor and obscure ; her royal lineage was a thing 
forgotten ; the blood of kings was in her veins, but she was 
an obscure village-maiden. Her nation was then at its lowest 
ebb ; and the time had come when there was no worldly honor 
in being a Jew. He was born in a stable, or cave, because 
the inn was full of guests esteemed superior to his parents. 
His infancy was obscure as the obscurest of his followers ever 
lead. He entered upon his manhood, to be subjected to tempt- 
ation ; to live apart from all high alliances ; to be too poor to 
buy the lodging of a night ; to be the servant of everybody ; 
to have his almighty skill commanded by beggars, cripples, 
lepers, and lunatics. He went forth a teacher, to have his 
instructions despised and rejected. " This is the stone the 
builders rejected." His death was brought on by betrayal, 
perjury, mob-power, tyranny; with the highest display of in- 
gratitude, contempt, hatred, oppression, and cruelty. He, on 
whom death had no claim, tasted death, and lay in the grave. 
As God-man he was thus abased below himself, below man, 
3* 



30 SERMONS. 

below the worst of men ; for they gave the gallows to him, in 
preference to a seditious murderer ; and judged him fit to 
occupy the place of eminence between two men pronounced 
unfit to live on God's earth, and in human society. He was 
" set at naught." He was " a root out of a dry ground." 

All this was an expression of the position in which sin 
had placed man ; which is the answer to our next inquiry : 

2. What teas the object of this humiliated state ? — As 
a representative of two parties, God and man, or of law and 
transgression, he must enter into the estate of both. To be 
surety for man, he must be man, and man under a broken 
law. He must fulfil its righteousness ; for, unless he were 
Jesus ' Christ the righteous, he could not be accepted of the 
Father. That righteousness must be a righteousness of 
obedience. He must pay our debts, bear our penalties, 
satisfy for our offences, and have a claim as mediator on 
the good we need. 

As a Power entering our humanity in its fallen condition, 
he must meet us where we are, to assure us of his sympathy, 
and win our hearts. God must stoop to reach us. If a king 
would redeem his subjects, and not sacrifice the majesty of 
the law they have violated, he must abase himself If the 
Son of the Highest would redeem us by moral power, he must 
be a model of all he would have us be ; showing in his own 
life unlimited submission ; unlimited confidence ; unlimited 
absorption of zeal, or consecration to another's glory ; unlim- 
ited patience in bearing injuries and trials in our mortal 
state ; these he must show us in the details of a human life. 



THE PRIMITIVE GLORY OF CHRIST. 31 

He must honor the loAvest condition of humanity ; he must 
pour contempt on the highest station, in comparison with per- 
sonal excellence and usefulness in the lowest. 

All this required him to be man — man worthy of the 
highest station, but, in fact, abased to the lowest. 

3. What was, then, the motive of the Son of God in 
enter in (/ upon this estate of hwniHation? — It was love, 
divine love, as God; human love as man, as soon as his 
human faculties comprehended for what end they were 
created. He '' loved me, and gave himself for me," is the 
wondering language of every redeemed man. The prospect 
of our misery and degradation moved his compassion. The 
prospect of our elevation and salvation stirred his soul to 
intense and unquenchable desires to procure it for us. 

We are now prepared to consider : 

III. The Lord's desire to resume his original 
GLORY. — And here we would first obtain a clear idea 

1. Hoio that glory could be regained. — It has been 
stated that the glory of the Godhead had been veiled in the 
incarnation. Now, there were wantino; two thing's to com- 
plete this glorious work of redemption : That he who had 
thus humiliated himself for a time should, by the Father's 
consent, resume that original glory, that it might be known 
henceforth in earth, heaven, and hell, that he who thus hum- 
bled himself is true and very God. And then it must also 
be permitted to this human nature of Christ to share that 
glory, so far as is compatible with a human nature. And it 
was all, not natural, but supernatural. He must be sustained 



32 SERMONS. 

through the tremendous trials which lay before him ; enabled 
to gain the most resplendent victory the universe ever saw, 
over Satan, sin, earth, death, and hell. He must triumph 
over death in dying, and over the grave in coming under its 
bondaoje. He must rise from the dead ; the leader of a risincr 
race, ascend to the palace of God, and sit as God-man at the 
head of the universe. This is the glory he asked to have 
bestowed upon him. 

2. Why did he desir^e it? — That the universe might 
see divine love triumphant over satanic malignity, and wear- 
ing the crown of its victory. Having discharged all he 
had undertaken as our Mediator, it was most proper that 
he should now be publicly acquitted of any further demands 
of humiliation or sacrifice. Having merited the crown and 
sceptre as the King of Israel, he should now receive it. He 
longed, too, that the joy of his disciples might be complete. 
There were those, from the beginning, who had made com- 
mon cause with him. There should be such to the end of 
time ; and they are dear to him as his dearest friends. And 
for their sakes, who have loved him in his obscurity, like an 
exiled prince, he would be restored to his throne, that he 
might honor and reward their attachment to him, by revealing 
to them and to those who despised their piety the real char- 
acter of him they have been thus loving and aiding, simply 
for what he is in himself, and not for the sake of any exter- 
nal badges of honor. Nay ; the whole intelligent universe is 
represented in the Scripture as held in some kind of sus- 
pense, until Christ should take the throne as mediator. 



THE PRIMITIVE GLORY OF CHRIST. 33 

Some have supposed that even the elect angels were not con- 
firmed till that period. We are told expressly that the condi- 
tion of all the redeemed who preceded the resurrection of 
Christ, was imperfect, and waiting for the sealing of his 
return. 

There remains, then, but one other point to be considered. 

3. W/iy did our Lord need to ijvay for this ? — The 
inquiry involves several of the difficulties men find in under- 
standing the Scriptures. One is, the very nature of prayer 
itself, and particularly prayer to God for a good which he 
has already rendered certain. It Avould suffice here to say, 
that that objection lies against all prayer. When Daniel 
found by books that the time for restoring the captives to 
their country had come, he gave himself to a course of abste- 
mious living, and to meditation and prayer for this very 
event. We may be sure of this, — not that Daniel had not 
sufficient sagacity to appreciate our embarrassment/' but that 
he had too much wisdom and holiness to give any weight to 
it. When God had promised great blessings to Israel, then 
he says, " I will yet for this be inquired of, by the house 
of Israel, to do it for them."— Ez. 36 ; 37. The thing to be 
done was in itself most proper, desirable, nay, sure ; and yet 
must be sought for in prayer. That is the wisdom of heaven, 
though it may not be according to the wisdom of earth. 

There remains another difficulty. How could prayer be 
offered by the Son of God to his Father ? But this is only a 
part of the mysterious arrangement by which we are to be 
saved. The Father sends and employs, sustains and rewards. 



34 SERMONS. 

the Son. All of this phraseology includes facts of which we 
can comprehend but a portion of the meaning ; but that por- 
tion is of immeasurable consequence to us. We are taught 
that the coeternal Son is sent of the Father ; that in the 
Avhole work of redemption he occupies a subordinate place. 
As the great High Priest of the church, he is represented 
as making continual intercession for us. And this prayer 
was but a part and expression of his subordination. 

It is, then, an iinmeasurahle evil to deny the divine 
glory of Christ. — You cannot assign him any middle place. 
He utterly refuses it at your hands. Your compliments 
about his excellence, and his being the greatest and the best 
man, and a sort of divine man, are : first robbing a king of 
his crown ; and then presenting one or two of its jewels as 
a token of your reverence and loyalty. " Before Abraham 
was, I am," he says ; and you make him a liar and a blas- 
phemer, and men so understand you, if you deny it. Obscure 
his glory, and you know nothing of the glory of God. How 
do you know the Father ? By his works. But the Son 
made everything that was made. If you find infinite power 
and wisdom in creation and providence, if you find God in 
the moral government of the world, it is the Son you meet 
there. " No man knoweth the Father, but the Son, and he 
to whom the Son shall reveal him." God shines through his 
works, his words, and the personal manifestation in the Son, 
who " was in the bosom of the Father, and the express image 
of his person." Deny God in his works, and you have no 
God. Deny him in his word, and you have only the pagan 



THE PRIMITIVE GLORY OF CHRIST. 85 

idea of him. Deny him as manifested in the Son, and, what- 
ever else you are, you are not a worshipper of the God of the 
Bible. You would know the wisdom of God. But as it is 
an essential, eternal property of the divine nature, we can- 
not comprehend it. We see it in its operations and produc- 
tions ; none of them more glorious than redemption, the sal- 
vation of the church. So Paul describes it : "To make all 
men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the 
beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all 
things by Jesus Christ, to the intent that now unto the prin- 
cipalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by 
the church the manifold wisdom of God." '' In Christ are 
hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." " Christ, 
the power of God, and the wisdom of God." Men who deny 
the Deity of Christ speak much of the love of God. But 
God furnishes the highest proof of his love, not in the man 
Christ Jesus coming to teach ; but in his giving his Son to 
become a man, and to die for the sins of men. Herein is 
love ; and it is before this love of the Father in giving his 
Son to the lowliness of his human estate, to agony and death ; 
this love of the Son in leaving the glory he had with the 
Father, that the heart yields. There is no point on which 
the great enemy of souls is more earnest than on this. The 
wisest pagan philosophers were unable to shun the rocks of 
a debasing enslavement to the world, so long as they 
remained ignorant of God, as revealed in the person of the 
Son ; for th-at was as much the revelation to the Jewish, as it 
is to the Christian church. Abraham, Christ says, rejoiced 



36 SERMONS. 

to see his daj. Our personal sanctification depends on our 
seeing the glory of Christ. " Beholding as in a glass the 
glory of God, we are changed into the same image." But, 
if he were only a man, then he merely taught us ; he did not 
love us on the throne of heaven, and come to redeem us. Our 
fitness for heaven depends upon our seeing his glory by faith 
here. "He that believeth in me hath everlasting life." Belie v- 
eth what? That " I came down from the Father," willingly 
resigning the glory I had with the Father before the world 
was ; that I bare his sins in my body ; that I sit on the right 
hand of majesty, as king, as intercessor. This belief is not 
the dead, cold morality of which the world boasts : it is the 
love that gives life to all other moral excellence. It is for 
these persons thus Christ supplicates in a subsequent part of 
this prayer : " Father, I will that they also whom thou hast 
given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my 
glory which thou hast given me." That prayer will be 
answered as death comes with his kind hand, and lifts the 
veil that hides eternity and Jesus. Now, we are to walk by 
faith ; then, by sight : faith in the mysterious Trinity ; faith 
in the divine and human natures of Jesus ; faith in his prim- 
itive glory, in his voluntary abasement, in his resumption of 
that glory ; faith in our own interest in that glory. This is 
the life of the church. It was Paul's life. When he talked 
of heaven, he did not speak of meeting either his friends there, 
or God the Father. Heaven to him was to depart and be with 
Christ. What was Paul, the aged ; Paul, the great master- 
builder of the Lord's church ; Paul, whom Christ commis- 



THE PRIMITIVE GLORY OF CHRIST. 37 

sioned to face the potentates of the earth as his representa- 
tive? — was he an idolator? No; seeing Christ is seeing the 
Father. ''He that hath seen me hath seen the Father also." 

No man can tell what New England has suffered by the 
bold, open denial of Christ's participation in the Godhead ; 
and that many who have done it should now be retracing 
their steps is a sign of great promise. ! it is not a ques- 
tion of party strife, of mere theological hair-splitting. It is 
the question whether Christ is an impostor ; whether the 
church is on a rock, or on sand ; whether I am to believe in 
Christ and love Christ less than God, or as God ; whether my 
Saviour, to whom, with the dying Stephen, I am to commit 
my departing spirit, can hear me in that hour ; or, whether 
I and my neighbor who calls on the Virgin Mary in that 
hour are alike idolaters, going before God's judgment-seat 
in the very act of insulting his majesty, and breaking his 
commandment. 

We are to feel a deep solicitude for those who place 
the world before Christ in their affections. — They are 
blind. Here is true glory, and they see it not. They chase 
shadows ; trust in the arm of flesh and uncertain riches. They 
seek the honor that cometh from man, but know not the glory 
of believing in Christ, suffering for him, reigning with him. 

They despise their only Saviour. 

The glory of Christ should be the theme of our daily 

meditations. — His primitive glory is a powerful theme of 

thought. It fixes the attention, fills the soul with awe, and 

prepares to appreciate his condescension. Creation and 

4 



38 SERMONS. 

providence show that glory ; for he it was who laid the found 
ations of the earth. But his incarnation, his earthly life, and 
his death, are the most important themes of human thought. 
Not a day should pass without their occupying our minds. 
"While his present and future glory will perfect our charac- 
ters just so far as we cordially believe and devoutly contem- 
plate them. 



III. 

THE ATONEMENT PERFECTLY MADE BY CHRIST^S 
DEATH. 



"J3a one offftins f)c l)ntf) perfecteti forcfacr ttem tijat art 
sancttfieti." — Heb. 10: 14. 

A TREATISE was written at the beginning of the twelfth 
century by the renowned Anselm, on the question, " Where- 
fore has God become Man ? " He opens it with this remark : 
" Whatever man can say or know on this subject, there will 
yet remain profounder reasons for it than those he may have 
discovered." So can we say of the Atonement, "we know 
in part." The divmes of New England have accomplished a 
great work by discovering in it a. principle of moral govern- 
ment, and showing how God could consistently make a sacri- 
fice to his own justice. But it is hurtful to leave the subject 
there, as if it were fully comprehended by any act of the 
speculative understanding. 

The priesthood of Christ is not yet fully understood on 
earth ; nor is the power of his sacrifice at this day com- 
pletely felt, even by believers. May light shine upon our 
minds, and beams of vital heat from the cross fall upon our 
hearts, while we are gazing upon it here f 



40 SERMONS. 

I propose to inquire what the Atonement is, and what are 
its effects ; and from this to show that it was made bj one 
offering. 

I. The Nature of the Atonement. — It is here de- 
scribed as an offering, and a single offering. 

1. The Atonement is an offering up of the body and 
soul of Jesus as an expiation. — Expiatory offerings 
belong to all the religions that preceded Christianity. 
But in only one of them have we evidence of its being 
divinely appointed. We can no more doubt the institution 
of expiatory sacrifices, by God's direction, at Mt. Sinai, 
than we can doubt the most authentic facts in history. But 
there are frequent intimations, during the continuance of 
that system, that it was not to endure forever. "Will I eat 
the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats ? " was a start- 
ling inquiry in the ears of men who had never looked beyond 
the surface of their sacrifices. It was light in advance of ' 
his day for David to say, " The sacrifices of God are a broken 
heart." Micah makes the bold appeal, "Will the Lord be 
pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of 
rivers of oil ? Shall I give my first-born for my transgres- 
sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? " 

Yet that system of bloody offerings was appointed of God, 
and had most important meanings and effects. Its essential 
features were thes^ : there was an order of men selected by 
divine choice as sacrificers and mediators : they not only 
took, as LeviteS; the place of the first-born sons of all the 
Jewish families who had by their birthright been domestic 



THE ATONEMENT BY CHRIST'S DEATH. 41 

priests ; but they were, under very solemn circumstances, 
substituted for them as a ransom. When the first-born of 
Egypt were slain, the first-born of Israel were spared. And 
as a ransom-price for them, Jehovah appropriated the entire 
tribe of Levi to his own immediate service ; and then from 
them the priests were chosen, in Aaron's line of descent. 
The existence of the priesthood was thus a continual exhibi- 
tion both of substitution and redemption. These men offered 
to God the valuable gifts of such as had transgressed his 
commandments. And a large part of the offerings were 
sacrifices, or the life-blood of this innocent in place of that 
of the guilty. 

All these essential features of the ancient sacrifices are 
preserved in the real atonement of the New Testament, only 
modified in their forms. There is now, as then, a priest called 
of God, as was Aaron. There is now, as then, a valuable 
sacrifice ofiered by the offender to the offended. But the 
modification is this : the sacrifice or loss is now on the part 
of the offended. That constitutes its efiicacy. On the part 
of the offerer it is presented merely by an humble acqui- 
escing faith ; which has ever been the stone of stumbling and 
rock of offence in the cross. There is now, as then, a life 
offered. Blood poured forth from vital channels, as the 
expression of suffering and death, is the great feature of 
atonement made prominent in the ancient sacrifices, most 
prominent in the great expiatory sacrifice. The points of 
contrast are very fully drawn out in the epistle to the 
Hebrews. The priests of the old atonement were sinners ; 
4* 



42 SERMONS. 

the Priest of the new expiation is holy, harmless, undefiled, 
and separate from sinners. He did not offer an expiation for 
himself, consequently, as they did. Death was to them in 
the course of nature. With him it was the result of a special 
voluntary consecration. Their deaths had nothing remark- 
able. They lived for the sake of their services. Dying 
terminated their services. His death was the end for which 
he came into the world. It was the crowning feature of his 
eternal priesthood. They offered other men's sacrifices ; he 
gave himself. The priest and the victim were in him identi- 
cal. They offered beasts' bodies ; he offered a human body. 
They offered an animal spirit ; he poured out a human soul 
on God's altar. Their priesthood ended when he was offering 
his great sacrifice. He is "a priest forever after the order 
of Melchizedek." 

But there is one peculiar feature of his atonement, which 
is made prominent in the text. 

2. His expiatory offeriyig was made once and forever. 
— They attended daily at the altar. Stated daily sacrifices 
required their presence there ; and they must be in attend- 
ance whenever an offerer should present himself. And the 
office was hereditary, so that death might make no breach in 
the service. For fifteen hundred years they continued that 
work of the priesthood, more or less interrupted by wars, and 
captivities, and declensions. No man can compute the num- 
ber of victims which were slain by this priesthood. But 
when the true Priest had come, and the Lamb of God was 
provided, then he was offered once for all. That death on the 



THE ATONEMENT BY CHRIST'S DEATH. 43 

little eminence called Calvary was the great event of time 
and of eternity. It blotted out the law of bloody sacrifices 
and expiatory offerings forever. It darkened the sun by its 
suffering; and it rent the veil of the temple, because the mys- 
tery of the old system was now opened to the gaze of the 
universe, and because the way to heaven was really opened 
to us. It shook the earth as the citadel of Satan's empire, 
and burst the graves of the dead, as it was the rending of the 
seal and sentence of death. So the pen of inspiration ex- 
plains the rending of the veil. "The way into the holiest 
of all was not yet made manifest, while as yet the first 
tabernacle was standing, which was a figure for the time 
then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, 
that could not make him that did the service perfect, as per- 
taining to the conscience ; but Christ being come a high 
priest of future good, by a greater and more perfect taber- 
nacle, not made with hands ; neither by the blood of goats 
and calves, but by his own blood, he entered in once into the 
holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us." 

That long succession of priests, and that continued series 
of expiatory offerings by the church, is very affecting to us, 
viewed in its intrinsic inefiiciency, its merciful appointment 
by God, or its real value as issuing in and preparing for 
the great atonement. We now inquire, 

II. In avhat consisted the efficacy of Christ's 
SACRIFICE? — In the text it is said, " By one offering he 
perfected forever them that are sanctified." "Sanctify" is 
used in this epistle in a peculiar sense, as you may see in the 



44 SERMONS. 

ninth chapter, thirteenth verse, where, speaking of the exter- 
nal and temporary influence of the ancient sacrifices, they 
are said to have "sanctified to the purifying of the flesh;" 
that is, taken away the ceremonial defilement ^vhich hindered 
the worshipper from approaching God. Ordinarily the New 
Testament meaning of sanctify is to produce spiritual or 
inward purification. Here it includes that, but refers chiefly 
to removing that guilt by which our consciences keep us from 
approaching God, and his holiness prevents his admitting us 
to audience and communion with him. 

The efficacy of the atonement consists in its reconciling 
God to the believing worshipper. But, as some deny, and 
others vaguely admit, that the atonement removes any obsta- 
cles on God's part, as a God of justice, I would first show 
from the Scriptures that it has a two-fold efficacy, and then 
show, as far as I may, wherein its efficacy consists. 

1. The Scriptw^es assign to the sacrifice of Christ a 
two-fold efficacy : as reconciling God to man^ and recon- 
ciling man to God. — If there be not in the human soul a 
deep and dreadful apprehension of the wrath of God, then 
there is nothing there. Individuals may escape it ; but nations 
and generations — Pagan, Je^vish, Mohammedan, or Christian 
— testify to it. And if the Gospel of Christ is not designed 
to meet that feeling, then language has no meaning. Yet 
there are those who deny that the sacrifice of Christ procures 
any change in God. I should wish to ask any unsophisticated 
person that understands the Hebrew, what the Jews meant 
by ntj ; and by the expression SJias-'^^iap "'l^ris: ; or, if he un- 



THE ATONEMENT BY CHRIST'S DEATH. 45 

derstands the Greek, what the Hellenistic Jews meant by 
iluXeiifjov TO a-yourjud /nov ; OF what we mean by the corres- 
ponding words, forgive and forgiveness. If a man oflfends 
another by a wrong act, there are two evils : the wrong he 
has done the other, and the injury done himself They are 
two perfectly distinct results from the same act. And no 
sane man ever thought of applying the term forgive to a doing 
away of the evil one has inflicted on himself A man wounds 
another's good name by a falsehood. Now, he may repent of 
the lie most sincerely, and so put away the injury it inflicted 
on himself ; but that is a very different thing from being for- 
given by the other. And this distinction the Scriptures most 
fully recognize. Repentance is one thing ; forgiveness, quite 
another. Repentance is a human act, forgiveness is an act 
of God. " Repent and be converted, that your sins may be 
blotted out." Now, the atonement produces both effects : it 
reconciles the sinner to God, and God to the sinner ; or, in 
other words, produces repentance and forgiveness. Passages of 
this kind are very numerous : " Through this man is preached 
the forgiveness of sins ; " Christ is " exalted a prince and a 
Saviour, to give repentance and forgiveness of sins ; by him 
all that believe are justified from all things, from which they 
could not be justified by the law of Moses." Justification 
and sanctification are entirely distinct ; the one being a 
change in our personal character ; the other, in our relations to 
the moral government of God. Christ is called our passover. 
But what was the passover ? A lamb slain, that its sprinkled 
blood on the door-post might save from death. The atone- 



46 SERMONS. 

ment of Christ refers first to past sins, and to that relation 
in which they place us to the justice of God. It is in this 
sense that Christ bore our sins. He sufiered in consequence 
of them, that we might not. 

But the Scriptures likewise assign to the atonement a 
mighty effect on him who receives it by faith. That effect is 
both direct and indirect. It acts directly on the conscience, 
bringing peace. This is in part the meaning of the word 
"perfected" in the text. "Come unto me, ye weary and 
burdened ; I will give you rest." " Being justified by faith, 
we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ." 
The blood of Christ, called the blood of sprinkling, is said to 
" speak better things than the blood of Abel : " this crying 
"revenge;" that "forgive." This is the influence of the 
atonement on the guilt-stricken conscience. A guilty con- 
science forbids the sinner to approach even the mercy-seat of 
God. Therefore the Scriptures say, " The blood of Christ 
purges the conscience from dead works to serve the living God." 
The indirect effect of the atonement in sanctifying the heart 
is powerfully taught in that mysterious language of Christ, 
"whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath ever- 
lasting life." Paul teaches it, too, when he says, "We are 
crucified by the cross ; we are dead with Christ ; buried with 
him by baptism into death." 

Can we, then, explain this efficacy of the atonement ? The 
Scriptures enter into no direct and profound explanations of 
this point. But we are permitted to contemplate, and dis- 



THE ATONEMENT BY CHI^ST'S DEATH. 47 

cover, by incidental light in them, and by experience, at least 
some of 

2. These sources or elements of its power. — It is, 
indeed, sufficient for all the practical purposes of life, that 
-we have adequate evidence of the efficacy or power of any 
substance or agent, "without understanding the mode of its 
operation. It ought to be so in religion. We have perfectly 
resolved anything, in fact, when we have resolved it into the 
will of God. The efficacy of everything lies there. Steam 
is powerful. But what do you know about the secret of 
its power? You call it expansion. But that is only a name. 
God has chosen that water heated to a certain degree shall 
possess certain powers ; that is to us the ultimate fact. So it 
is with light, with medical remedies, mechanical powers, and 
everything in nature. 

To us, then, the testimony of God is conclusive, that the 
sacrifice offered by Christ, of himself, on the cross, has the 
power to secure forgiveness from God, peace to the human 
conscience, and holiness to the human heart. We can see in 
the common explanation very sufficient reasons for the power 
of the atonement with God. It guards the public interests, 
just as the promulgation and execution of law do ; only in a 
much greater degree. There are three classes of minds to 
be affected by the atonement : the holy, the impenitent, and 
the penitent. And when we see that on each of these classes 
the atonement strengthens the conviction of God's aversion 
to sin, we can see why God exercises his mercy freely through 
the atonement toward every penitent believer. The holy and 



48 ' SERMONS. 

the impenitent see in the atonement just what they see in the 
law, — suffering, the consequence of sin. — only under infi- 
nitely more impressive circumstances than in the execution 
of the penalty of the law. It is very obvious how it affects 
the conscience of the penitent, deepening his horror of sin, 
but releasing him from despair. Then it comes upon his 
he^rt, an everlasting impulse of motive, constraining him to 
live for Christ ; which is, to live holily. The atonement 
includes all the ignominy, and sorrow, and agony, to which 
the Son of God subjected himself for our redemption. God 
must make his feelings known, as we do, by speech and 
actions. Voluntary suffering is the highest form of action, 
giving to expressions of love their deepest significancy, and 
most potent confirmation. But love to God is the essence of 
obedience to the law ; and, if he draws us to love him, he 
draws us to obedience. He shows us, in the most vivid 
form, his approbation of the law by the life and death of 
Jesus Christ ; his life being an exhibition of perfect obedi- 
ence to its precept ; and his death being an equivalent to 
enduring its penalty, after a life of perfect obedience to its 
precept. His life and death are thus a constant appeal to 
our consciences, to our sympathies, and to every generous 
sentiment of our hearts. Nothing can be more efiicacious 
than this to inspire a dread of sin, confidence in God, grate- 
ful obedience, and fortitude in temptation. 

But the text afiirms, what we now proceed to contemplate; 
that 

III. The atonement consists in a single oblation. — 



49 



" By one offering he hath perfected forever them that are 
sanctified." This was a stumbling-block to the Jews, who 
had always been accustomed to see the daily repetition of 
the oblation. The fact is so obvious to us, however, that we 
need not dwell upon it, that the Son of God became incar- 
nate once, suffered on earth, and died a \'iolent death, once, 
and is never to repeat the process. The second time. he 
appears here, it will be "without sin unto salvation," — 
without the sins of men imputed to him. But we may sug- 
gest considerations to account for it : 

1. The perinanence or the repetition of Chrisfs suf- 
ferings is not necessary for the purposes of atonement. 
— If we look at the influence of it on other beings, good and 
bad, we can see that the transient acts of Christ's life, and 
the permanent assumption of our nature for our redemption, 
are an eternal guarantee of his love of the law. If we look 
at its effects on the pardoned, it is sufficient that Christ lived 
here thirty-three years, and died once. The mother that 
bore you, and cherished you in infancy's helpless years, 
needs not repeat all that, in order to convince you of her 
love, or to strengthen her claims upon your love. Our 
fathers stood up and read the Declaration of Independence 
in the face of Britain and the world. They laid all upon 
the altar there, and followed up that act by the perils and 
toils of a dreadful war. Do we need the repetition of those 
struggles and sacrifices to convince us of their attachment to 
our freedom ? A stranger rushed into the flames, and saved 
you from a horrid death, when you were a child. Have yoa 
5 



50 SERMONS. 

ever forgotten it ? Will you ever forget it ? God needed 
only to express once, in this form, his unvarying grief at our 
sins, — his uncompromising opposition to them. Nay, more : 
2. The permanent suffering of the innocent and benev- 
olent Redeemer would defeat the very end of atonement. 
— That end is, to diminish suffering in the universe. If we 
are to be saved at the eternal expense of such a Being ; if he 
is to be forever buffeted and spit upon, while we are crowned 
with glory ; if he is to sink under the Father's frown, while 
we rejoice in the light of his countenance, — then the cost is 
too great. To awaken the most generous sentiments in the 
hearts of the redeemed, and to sustain them, Christ must be 
rewarded with everlasting honor and joy. To enjoy heaven 
by the continued sufferings of our Friend and Kedeemer, 
would make us selfish ; to see his sufferings, and not be 
selfish, would make our own happiness impossible. '' He 
entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal 
redemption for us. Now, once in the end of the world hath 
he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." 
" By one offering he hath perfected forever them that are 
sanctified." That sacrifice is sufficient for all who are 
brought to repent. It is an atonement for all, — a redemp- 
tion only to them who are sanctified. It is to them sufficient 
for all their sins, — for all time, — for all eternity. As the 
Scriptures say, the old sacrifices would never have ceased to 
be offered, if they had possessed any real efficacy; " because 
that the worshippers, once purged, should have no more con- 
science of sin." The Father will forever retain the memory 



THE ATONEMENT BY CHRIST'S DEATH. 51 

of that sacrifice ; the universe will never forget it ; and so, 
the ends of justice shall be satisfied. Suffering crowned 
with glory will- forever satisfy the heart of the redeemed. 
" This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever 
sat down on the right hand of God." 

The Apostle's argument has, to this day, lost none of 
its force. — The Jews understood the doctrine of propitia- 
tion, or atonement, so imperfectly as utterly to defeat its 
design. There was an external, civil benefit resulting from 
offering their sacrifices. " They sanctified to the purifying 
of the flesh," — that is, they were a part of their duty as 
subjects of that civil estate of which Jehovah was directly 
the King. He rewarded obedience to it as a civil require- 
ment by civil benefits. But they went away, blessed in 
their outward estate by their king, from that altar, while the 
curse of their God, for unpardoned sin, remained on their 
souls. And even when the Antitype had come, they refused 
to believe in the Lamb of God, who by his sacrifice taketh 
away the sin of the world. They wanted still a daily offer- 
ing, and would not believe in that one perfect, eternal Offer- 
ing for sin. Their spirit is still perpetuated among us, under 
the garb of Christianity. In the churches of Rome, Russia, 
and England, there are priests still offering up daily sacrifice 
for sin. The very name of priest, applied to a New Testa- 
ment minister, is suspicious. Masses, penances, mediators, 
purgatory, the offering of the body and blood of Christ liter- 
ally, are all so many contradictions of the unity and perfect- 
ness of Christ's atonement. The sacrifice of sacraments, 



52 SERMONS. 

and the atoning power of our alms-givings, penitence, and 
praying, are enemies of the cross of Christ. To them all 
Paul says, " It is not possible that " they " should take away 
sins." " We are sanctified through the oifering of the body 
of Christ, once for all." " Every priest standeth daily, 
ministering, and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which 
can never take away sins ; but this man, after he had offered 
one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of 
God ; for by one offering he hath forever perfected them that 
are sanctified." 

We see who they are that receive the full benefit of the 
atonement. — Not they who merely have the sentence of 
eternal death temporarily suspended by the atonement, — 
that is, the benefit of it, which all enjoy ; since, but for 
Christ's death, this divine forbearance would be impossible ; 
but it is so far only a suspension. Nor do they receive the 
full benefit of Christ's death who justify themselves to their 
own consciences only, and not to God, — who say and believe 
they have not deserved death. This may satisfy their own 
consciences ; but it is only Christ's sacrifice that satisfies 
God's justice. Nor do they get the full benefit of Christ's 
great offering who attempt to satisfy God with the atone- 
ment of Christ, without applying it to their own hearts for 
sanctification. 

They only are truly benefited by the wonderful sacrifice 
made by the Son of God, who truly return to God by it, — 
who use it equally with God, their own consciences, and their 
hearts. 



THE ATONEMENT BY CHRIST'S DEATH. 53 

Why, then, do any reject this atonement ? Some do it 
from insensibility to their guilt: while others, sensible of 
their need of an atonement, doubt whether, after all, God 
has grace enough to receive them through it. Most persons, 
however, reject it from an aversion to its very principle, it 
pronounces so emphatically and awfully the demerit of our 
souls, our guilt, our helplessness, the worthlessness of our 
services, and the moral equality of the whole unregenerated 
race of men. These aspects of it repel every sinful sensi- 
bility of the human heart, and chiefly its pride. Here is 
" the ofifence of the cross." 

Then let us rightly use the atonement of Christ, by making 
it the only basis of our peace with God, — of our present 
enjoyment, and our hope of future good. Some, even in the 
church, have peace and hope from other sources. But these 
streams are not healthful nor permanent. We must apply to 
our consciences " tlie blood of sprinkling," — make the " one 
offering" of Christ the object of our delighted contempla- 
tion. " Precious blood of Christ " is a Scripture phrase 
we must comprehend and adopt. We must see that Christ is 
'' a sweet savor to God." We must "glory in the cross of 
Christ." We are also to apply it to our hearts, saying, 
'' Alas ! and did my Saviour bleed? Was it for crimes that 
I had done he groaned upon the tree ? " And when we 
repeat these words, it is not to pity him as now suffering, 
but to sympathize with his past suffering, — to remind our- 
selves that he would suffer again, if it were necessary, for 
us, — that we virtually repeat his crucifixion by our sins, 
5* 



54 SERMONS. 

We cannot too often, in imagination, visit that garden where 
he bowed, and cried, " Father, if thou wilt, let this cup pass 
from me." These visits are not gloomy, but penitentiallj 
tender, and reverentially sympathizing, grateful, tearful, joy- 
ful ; like showers watering the germs of hope that grace has 
planted in our souls. 

0, proclaim to the world, burdened with the vague con- 
sciousness of guilt, that they are guilty, but that here is an 
atonement for guilt ! Let every one that heareth the glad 
tidings, be a missionary ! Proclaim it to Pagan, Papist, 
Mohammedan, Infidel, Jew, and the most careless worldling. 
Here is the rock of hope ; here is the door of life ; here is 
the balm to heal the soul's disease, and to give it an immor- 
tal life. 



IV. 

THE MIRACLES. 



'•33cltc6e me ti^at I am in tfje jTatfier, antj tf)e Jfatfjer in me: or 
else ficlicbc me for tfje iicrg toorftg' sake." — John 14: 11. 

Christ was here addressing only his eleven apostles. 
They believed already much, but not all. They received 
him as the long-expected Messiah ; as a true prophet, as the 
greatest of prophets ; but they did not know that he was " in 
the Father, and the Father in him ; " that he is the Word 
that "in the beginning was with God, and was God." He 
wanted them to see by faith the Godhead in his lowly form. 

He therefore brings all the weight of his veracity to create 
in them a full belief in his divinity. They ought to believe 
him. There is a moral obligation to believe in goodness 
wherever it is exhibited, in moral truth wherever it is spoken, 
in God whenever he speaks. But God accommodates him- 
self to man's infirmity, and addresses him through works of 
such a kind that his reason will not, or should not, suffer him 
to doubt they are divine works. 

Christ had now been with those men more than three 
years. They had witnessed his works ; beginning with the 
miracle at the wedding, ending with the miraculous informa- 



56 SERMONS. 

# 

tion that they should meet a man on their path, bearing a 
pitcher, as they entered the city, who would, at his request, 
furnish them a room for the passover. The stupendous miracle 
of the resurrection had not yet occurred. But at least thirty- 
six miraculous works are described, and many more merely 
alluded to. Three times he had caused fish to enter the nets 
of his disciples in a supernatural way. He had, by a word, 
furnished bread for twelve thousand persons. He had walked 
on the stormy sea, and upheld Peter on it. He had twice 
calmed the tempest by a word. He had healed eight sick 
persons, one lunatic, six blind, eleven lepers, one paralytic, 
one with a withered hand, five demoniacs, one deaf mute, and 
raised three dead persons to life. And there are frequently 
expressions used by the Evangelists, which show that these 
were but a small portion of his miraculous deeds. 

To these works he now refers, and says, Believe me on 
their account, if not on my own statement. They unveil my 
divinity, surely. 

I shall now propose two inquiries. Should we believe 
that these miracles were ever performed ? Should we believe 
Christ on account of them ? 

I. Should we believe the miracles? — This question 
subdivides itself, to meet difierent objections. 

1. Are miracles possible ? — Mr. Hume says, no ; Spinoza 
says, no ; and a thousand less acute and less learned echo, 
no. Shall we repeat their echo ? If we must, let us do it 
with understanding. It has seemed to some men that they 
were increasing in wisdom in proportion as they doubted 



THE MIRACLES. 57 

what others believed. They have even gloried in the title 
of sceptic. But they were deceived ; for there are very few 
sceptics, if any, in the world. Some have gloried in having 
no creed. But they deceived themselves. They had a creed. 
Now, on the subject of miracles our modern infidels arc stout 
believers. They believe that if Gcd desires to bring a new 
power into his creation, he cannot do it. That, surely, is 
strong believing. But that is what is meant by saying ^' a 
miracle is impossible." And you that mean to be sceptics 
should not have so strong an article in your cr?ed. It is not 
only too much of a creed, but it is bigoted. It will keep us 
out of your infidel church, because we have not strong enough 
faith to believe that an almighty God, who made everything 
out of nothing, cannot make something out of something ; 
that he who could make living men from dust, could not make 
a living man of a dead one. 

"Miracles impossible!" How often the changes have 
been rung upon that groundless dogma ! If they were im- 
possible, how are we to find it out? "By our reason," we 
are told. But what is meant by reason ? — intuitive percep- 
tion ? Whose ? If mine, it does not tell me so. Another 
man's ? Then I am divided in my believing ; for A says it 
is, and B says it is not. Is it reasoning ? Then you can 
tell me yours. Perhaps you have adopted that of Mr. Hume, 
" the order of nature cannot be violated." But what do you 
mean by the order of nature ? A power above God ? Did 
he exhaust himself in creation ? Did he give nature more 
power than he possessed himself? If not, then I cannot 



58 SERMONS. 

infer that lie cannot introduce a new power to change the 
course of things, if he thinks it best to do so. No man can 
prove that miracles are beyond the power of the Almighty. 

I sit at the feet of a learned geologist, and he shows me a 
beginning of an order of animals. He pauses with reverence 
there, and saj'-s a new power here comes into exercise ; noth- 
ing that has gone before, accounts for this. We then pass 
over a series of strata, and, lo ! there breaks upon our vision 
another new order. Creative power ! he exclaims. A 
miracle ! He comes on to man, not growing out of a pump- 
kin or a monkey, but made man in the image of God ; made 
by no power or law that preceded, but by a miracle, contrary 
to all God's former experience. Am I now to believe the 
geologist or the theologian ? Then another inquiry arises. 

2. Are miracles improbable or incredible ? — It has been, 
and still is, so affirmed. Mr. Hume maintained that, even 
if a miracle could be performed, it could not be substantiated 
by any amount of testimony. Jesus Christ, therefore, never 
did raise the dead, nor calm the tempest by a word, nor 
himself rise from the dead. 

And Mr. Hume, and other unbelieving believers, know it, 
not by being older than other people, not by having been 
cotemporary with Christ ; but simply and solely by the 
insight they have into the capacities of an omnipotent God. 
They have reasoned out a path for the Almighty to walk in, 
and a work for him to do ; and he must not go beyond it. 
Yes, this is the absurdity of self-conceited wisdom. It could 
not invent a blade of grass, not make the wing of a butterfly ; 



THE MIRACLES. 59 

but it knows absolutely that God cannot bring a dead man 
to life ! Again, I inquire, on what ground can a man living 
in America, in the year 1853, affirm concerning a person 
living in Syria, in the year 33, that he did not do all 
that ? Simply on the general ground of the impossibility of 
believing anything that contradicts our own experience, and 
that of our neighbors. For instance, we ha^^ always seen 
the sun rise in the east, and set in the west. We can, there- 
fore, believe no degree of testimony whatever, that should 
affirm the sun set in the east on a certain evening, and rose hi 
the west the next morning. And if man should not believe 
it, on account of its intrinsic improbability, then God should 
not ; for, if it is not true, it is as contrary to his experience as 
to ours. When so great an event is affirmed as that a dead 
body at a command rose up in life and health, we must not 
believe it, and God must not believe it. And the reason of 
this necessity is a universal, eternal principle. "What is 
contrary to all experience cannot be true." Now, let us see 
where that reasoning will carry us. In all God's existence 
there never was a moment when man could begin to exist. 
Why? Because, up to that moment, God had never had the 
experience of a man beginning to exist, of something made 
out of nothing, or a living man out of dead matter. There- 
fore, the human race is coeternal with God, and never was 
made by him. Atheism is consistent for those who pretend 
to be eminently logical, and deny the possibility of believing 
a miracle, but nothing short of it is so ; it is not logical, 
but cowardly and illogical. As one well says, " Deny 



60 SERMONS. 

revelation, and I can push you irresistibly to atheism ; John 
Marshall himself cannot resist me." 

Passing, then, away from these absurd positions, we en- 
counter this rational inquiry affecting the probability of 
miracles : Is it not unlikely that our beneficent Creator would 
disturb that regular order of events, that sequence of causes 
and effects oh which science is founded, on which human 
happiness and the progress of society are so dependent ? 
The simple and complete answer to that reasonable inquiry 
is, if a beneficent Creator can answer a purpose of sufficient 
importance, he may do so : and, especially, if it be done so 
infrequently, and on so limited a scale, as not to derange the 
order of the universe. And such is the character of the 
miracles of Jesus. They have caused no law of nature to 
cease its regular operation, and they have aided a faith that 
saves the soul. 

We come now directly to meet the main question again. 
Having disposed of the two chief objections, that miracles 
are impossible, or, at least, incredible, we inquire, 

3. Have we a sufficient and satisfactory ground of 
belief that Christ performed those miraculous works 
which are attributed to him in the New Testament? — 
Having disposed of those two difficulties, as questions of 
philosophy, this question becomes one of mere history. And 
we meet it as we do any other question of authenticity in 
historical documents. There are many false records in 
history. The canons of historical criticism are, however, so 
definite and sound, that no doubt remains in any sane mind 



THE MIRACLES. 61 

whether Julius Caesar entered Gaul and Britain as a con- 
queror ; whether, in a word, his record of that expedition is 
substantially true. Precisely the same tests will show that 
Jesus lived in Syria at the beginning of the Christian era. 
It is so certain, that the civilized world dates from the begin- 
ning of his history as recorded by four writers in the Bible. 
There is a perfect chain of evidence that those four 
monographers appeared while the generation yet existed, that 
was cotemporaneous with Christ; that the miracles were 
declared to have taken place while yet the persons were 
living who could have contradicted the narrative ; that the 
Christian church was founded on the faith of the miraculous 
person and works of Jesus Christ ; and men perished by 
thousands in and for affirming the truth of them. 

Now, as has been well urged, there is in these facts a 
moral miracle more astonishing than any of these physical 
miracles, provided there were never such a personage, or that 
he never performed such works. 

The case may be stated thus : There lived in Syria, about 
eighteen hundred years ago, a large number of respectable 
and sensible people, who affirmed, by writing and orally, that 
they had seen Jesus of Nazareth ; that some had witnessed 
his calling the dead to life, and various other miraculous 
deeds ; and in every part of the country they named the 
places and the persons. They declared, concerning a man 
born blind, that the Pharisees had expelled him from the 
synagogue for his faith in his own healing ; that they knew 
Lazarus had been raised from the dead, and that they sought 
6 



62 SERMONS. 

to put him out of the way. Nay, there were five hundred 
who affirmed that they saw Jesus himself alive, after he had 
been dead. Their enemies opposed them, murdered them ; 
but' none of that age are known ever to have contradicted the 
facts they asserted. That was reserved for men of a remoter 
age, and of distant countries. Now, the moral miracle 
here involved is, that these people could have been got to 
make up such a story, if it be a fabrication ; that they should 
have named Lazarus, and Bartimeus, and Bethany, and 
Jerusalem ; that they should have proclaimed these facts in 
the face of intelligent enemies ; that before the Roman tribu- 
nal they should have insisted on them ; that they should have 
endured every form of insult, injury, and murder, out of 
confidence in these facts ; that with the false testimony of 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, should be joined the per- 
fect character and perfect moral code of Christ ; and that on 
all this base imposture should be founded all modern 
civilization ! 

On grounds purely historical, we then believe that Jesus 
Christ performed the miraculous works attributed to him. 

Our second inquiry was this : 

IL Should we be induced by them to admit the 
CLAIMS OE Christ to Divinity ? — We should, because 

1. They are the acts of a Creator. — Creation does not 
display allmightness, or infinite might ; only the power that 
to us is without limit ; and which, therefore, we should pre- 
sume to be infinite. But, whatever power creation displays, 
a true miracle exhibits the same. And, as we have the 



THE MIRACLES. 63 

admission of all deists and infidels that the acts attributed to 
Jesus Christ, if realities, are a mastery over the powers of 
nature, we need not now go into an exhibition of our reasons 
for believing it to be so. To us, Christ standing on the sea, 
and bidding the winds and waves to be still, and thus by a word 
controlling their tremendous material energy, is just as much 
an exhibition of Godhead, as the causing light to exist by a 
word. In fact, to us there is a strong significancy in his 
performing his miraculous works generally by a word, when 
a simple volition would have been as efficient. We recognize 
the same voice saying, " Let there be light ! " that said, 
" Lazarus, come forth ! " " Young man, I say unto thee 
arise!" Yes; we believe him "for the works' sake." 
'* He is in the Father, and the Father in him." 

But must we, then, attribute divinity to every man perform- 
ing miracles ? By no means. And this leads me to remark 
further, that 

2. Christ is the efficient agent in all miracles. — It 
would carry us too far into a mere branch of our subject to 
produce the evidence that this is true of the Old Testament 
miracles. It will suffice for our present purpose to show it 
concerning those of the New Testament. The evidence lies 
in these facts : Christ promised to give this supernatural 
power to his apostles ; they always recognized it as his, and 
employed it to commend him. The moral impression pro- 
duced by the apostles' miraculous works was never to 
secure glory to themselves, but to inspire confidence in 
Christ's divinity, and in the divine origin of Christianity. 



64 SERMONS. 

We have the record of his first commission and instructions 
to his apostles. I will quote it in part : " And when he had 
called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power over 
unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of 
sickness, and all manner of disease." This was repeated 
afterwards, in various forms. In order definitely and posi- 
tively to show the divine or Messianic origin of the wonder- 
ful powers which clothed the apostles, they were commanded 
to tarry at Jerusalem until the Spirit should descend upon 
them. He came down with most impressive external signs. 
Thus the apostle addressed the multitude wondering at the 
gift of tongues, declaring to them that Christ was then 
exalted at the right hand of the Father, and had shed forth 
that influence. And afterward two of them most earnestly 
entreated the people not to offer sacrifices to them, nor to 
look on them as though their holiness or power had performed 
these wonderful things. It was Christ, and not they ; and 
everywhere there were converts, not to Peter and Thomas^ 
but to Christ, as the result of this exercise of miraculous 
power. Christianity came into existence, a faith in Christ 
as God working with a power above the powers of nature. 
There can be no question, to any attentive reader, that the 
whole glory of miracles, by whomsoever performed, concen- 
trates on the Lord Jesus Christ ; and that they were wrought 
only to produce faith in him; and that such was their 
effect. 

But we have not quite completed our argument until we 
consider one more fact. 



THE MIRACLES. 65 

3. The Lord Jesus performed miracles hy his own 
power. — He is not separate from the Father in essence ; he 
is distinct in person, and subordinate in office. This official 
subordination sometimes requires that the Father shall be 
made prominent and chief. But "when the proper occasion 
comes, the Son is distinctly recognized as being the omnip- 
otent Creator of nature, and the omnipotent source of the 
power to transcend nature : to counteract that tremendous 
moral power which has brought disorder into nature, and 
turned its forces into destructive channels. The Son of God 
'• was manifested to destroy the works of the devil." He 
comes to meet him on his field of victory, and to undo by 
moral power his mischievous work. But, subordinate to 
that, he meets him, and overthrows him in nature. He 
speaks to devils ; not as the apostles did, in another's name, 
but in his own name he bids them quit their usurped posses- 
sion of human bodies. He commands winds and waves to 
allay their fury. He everywhere presents himself as the 
being that is doing it. And yet, lest men should rest in his 
human nature, he frequently repeats that the Father is in 
him, and he in the Father ; and the works that he has seen 
with the Father, he does. 

When Jesus was about to ascend to heaven, he said to his 
apostles : " Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost 
is come upon you ; and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both 
in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the 
uttermost parts of th^ earth." And that was thenceforward 
their work, and the object of all their miraculous deeds ; to 
6* 



66 SERMONS. 

bear witness to the divine glory of Christ, his redeeming 
sacrifice, and his second coming, to judge the world. When 
he called Lazarus to life he did it by a divine power ; not 
apart from the Father, nor independent of the Father ; but 
in his eternal unity with the Father, and his mediatorial 
subordination to him. But when Peter came to open the 
series of apostolic miracles, under the new dispensation of 
the Holy Ghost, he said to the cripple, "In the name of 
Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." 

We see, then, what use we are to make of the mira- 
cles recorded ifi the Scriptures. — They do not strike us as 
wonders now. That is, they cannot impress our feelings as 
if we had seen them ; nor would they then, if we should have 
seen them repeated frequently. But they are to us an indis- 
pensable part of the history of redemption. If the stupen- 
dous miracle of redemption is to be performed, and if it 
involves the miracle of an incarnation of the Son of God, 
then we must look for some correspondent signs in nature. 
Prophetic eyes must gaze on his coming, from afar. The 
Old Testament church must have many signs and wonders 
pointing to him. Prodigies must attend his birth, his life, 
and his death. Coming to deliver men from the crushing 
power of natural laws now under the control of moral evil, 
he must show himself above those laws. Coming to set us 
free from Death's dark domain, he must bring some trophies 
from Death's territory, while he is yet among us. He must 
bid Death come forth, and confess him Conqueror. 

And, then, all that represent him prominently must have 



THE MIRACLES. 67 

something of the same mark of heavenly power. Therefore, 
we are not surprised to see Moses a man endowed with im- 
mense power to work miracles. What, if we had seen him 
smiting Egypt with plague after plague, and relieving the 
wretched monarch from each, at his solicitation ; should 
we not have believed that Moses was sent from on high ? 
His guiding that people through the Red Sea, while it closes 
upon their enemies ; these, and the other stupendous works 
of Moses, Joshua, and Elijah, acquire to us the highest 
degree of probability, when we come to learn their relations 
to Christ. They foreshadowed his coming, who holds all 
nature in the hollow of his hand, and who is to redeem man 
by his own subjection to the power of evil. The miracles of 
Moses and Christ are not so much to convince us, as to sat- 
isfy a want. Their absence would be an irreparable defect. 
To hear Christ talk of delivering us from death, and yet 
the leaden dominion of death to remain undisturbed by him, 
in the persons of his own disciples, and then at length in his 
own ; to be called to believe in a dead Saviour, — all that 
might stagger our faith. But God has subjected it to no 
such trial. " Now is Christ risen, and become the first fruits 
of them that sleep." Go tell John or Theodore, or any 
other inquirer or doubter, that "the blind receive their sight, 
and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, 
the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached 
to them, and blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in" 
Jesus. 

But, it is said, others, not associated with Christ, nor con- 



68 SERMONS. 

nected in any way with Christianity, have performed prodi- 
gies. A glance at these will suffice. They occupy three 
distinct positions : they are either genuine wonder-workers, 
great bunglers, or simply great boasters. The magicians 
of Egypt were the most respectable of their order. They 
worked with the aid of the devil, their master ; in all proba- 
bility not to do real miracles, but to conjure wonderfully. 
That is just what we might expect. The Son of God comes 
to meet the Prince of Darkness in a moral struggle for the 
mastery over man. Both of them make nature tremble in 
her orb with the fierceness of their battle-strokes. Men 
have given themselves to Satan ; and he has rewarded them 
with his aid. 

But your blunderers are in the Roman church, with their 
winking dolls, and specimens of martyr -blood, liquefying on 
every anniversary of the saint, for centuries.. Your boasters 
are like Mohammed and the Mormons ; doing their miracles 
where no enemy can witness them ; can test them, or contra- 
dict them. 

The history of Deism furnishes a strong illustration 
of the Scripture : '' He taketh the wise in their oic?i 
craft iness.^^ — We are prepared to demonstrate that the 
systems of Deists, or rather their theories, are always self- 
destructive ; being contradictory to facts, and contradictory to 
themselves. When man undertakes to set his wisdom against 
God, he overreaches, and trips fatally somewhere. He ap- 
pears to his admirers very strong, very learned, very witty ; 
but, to men of sober reflection, sifting his pretensions, and 



THE MIRACLES. 69 

comparing his sayings with his sayings, there are in every 
one of their theories the seeds of its own destruction. 

To select a few instances : These gentlemen strenuously 
oppose all dogmatizing ; by which I understand them to 
mean asserting things to be true because we wish them to be 
true, without a sufficient evidence of their truth, and against 
satisfactory evidence. This is precisely the characteristic of 
every sceptical writer whose works I know. Against all the 
strong array of evidence which supports the miraculous facts 
of the New Testament, the people of Boston, for instance, 
are called on, on the mere assertion of one who has no means 
of judging that all have not, to renounce their belief in 
these facts, because they are in his view impossibilities. 
Does he prove them so by sound reasoning ? Does he find 
a logic that limits the Almighty? Has he historical evi- 
dence ? Nothing of all this. His only argument may be 
thus applied to another case, to test its value. There have 
been many forged notes on the Bank of England : therefore 
the Bank of England never issued any genuine notes. And 
yet, when some hear his strong appeals against dogmatizing, 
they elate their brow, and say, What a happy people we are 
to have got away from the dogmatizers ! These philosophers 
object to prophecy. But when they prophesy the good time 
that is coming, the infidel millennium that is to bless the 
earth, then everybody must have faith. Isaiah is a misera- 
ble pretender ; but these men, they are the true prophets. 
To escape the charge of dogmatizing, they modestly retreat 
from their bold positions, and say. No, we appeal to that 



70 SERMONS. 

witness which is in everj man's heart. But the vast major- 
ity of men say, We have no such witness in our hearts. Ah, 
yes, gentlemen, you have, if you only knew yourselves as 
well as we know you. 

In one breath they tell you that all men have the absolute 
religion ; then, in the next, they show that only a little coterie 
in England, Germany, and America, have it. They ridicule 
the old doctrines of election and regeneration ; and then Mr. 
Newman tells you that, by a mysterious new birth, these 
elect, these regenerated few, have been enabled to get at the 
real, genuine, absolute religion, without any fragments of 
Fetichism or orthodoxy clinging to it. 

They inform you that they know all about it, how God 
made man. They were not there, to be sure, at the precise 
day on which Adam was created, nor do they know anybody 
that was, nor are they fond of dogmatizing. Yet they know 
that man is now just as God made him at the beginning. 
But you have not gone two pages before the poor slave- 
holders, and upholders of the fugitive slave law, and what 
not, are rather the devil's fabric than God's. 

They are great enemies of a book-revelation, and of 
creeds. They remind me of a man of whom I once heard, 
who wrote a book, the first section of which went to show 
that language could not convey ideas nor truth. Why, then, 
write a book ? common sense would ask. And so, now, if 
the Bible cannot teach the absolute religion because it is a 
book, how can a book entitled Discourses on Religion do it ? 

It is no proof of a weak intellect that it. cannot make a 



THE MIRACLES. 71 

religion that will bear the scrutiny of reason ; for God, 
alone, can do that. But it is an evidence of God's kindness 
to men, that he does not allow any being to invent a religion 
that reason cannot discover to be self-contradictory, and con- 
tradictory to facts. 

There is tremendous guilt and peril in contradicting 
Christ. — Jesus Christ says: "These shall go away into 
everlasting punishment." I find a sermon, purporting to 
have been delivered in this city, which says: "I can never 
believe that evil is a finality with God." 

Jesus Christ say^ to his disciples : " Take, eat, this bread 
is my body." "Go ye into all the world and preach the 
Gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." 

This book says, however: "The Sacraments are no signs 
of religion to me ; they are dispensations of water, of wine, 
of bread, and no more." 

Jesus Christ says: "He that believeth and is baptized 
shall be saved," &c. This book says: "The minister of 
absolute religion is to hold a difierent talk. He is to say, 
my brethren, hold there ! — Stop your appeasing of God ! 
Wait till God is angry. Stop your imputing of righteous- 
ness ! There is no salvation in that. Stop your outcry of 
' believe, believe, believe ! ' " 

Jesus Christ says : " I am the vine, ye are the branches." 
This book says : "The minister is to teach man to save himself 
by his character and his life ; not to lean on another arm." 

Jesus Christ says to the dying thief, who prayed to him 



72 SERMONS. 

for salvation : '• This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." 
This book says: " The common notion of the value of a little 
snivelling and whimpering on a death-bed is too dangerous, 
as well as too poor, to be taught for science in the midst of 
the nineteenth century." 

Now, if Jesus Christ is what he claimed to be, here are 
idle words to be answered for ; here are words to ruin the 
souls of them that believe in them, because they are more 
palatable than those of Christ. 



V. 

CHKIST A PREACHER. 



^'Tsehex man spafte Itfte tf)t3 man." — John 7: 46. 

How much it is to be regretted that man has not retained 
a healthful imagination, and sensibility to moral beauty ! 
The name of Jesus should be to us the breaking of morning 
on the night of our common thoughts, our sorrows, and our 
cares ; of our earthly passions and desires. 

Let us, brethren, lift up our hearts unto God who giveth 
light and life, that we may now enter into the scene brought 
before us by these words. 

Our Lord's ministry was now nearly completed ; the effects 
of his example and preaching were manifesting themselves so 
plainly and universally, that the Sanhedrim had become des- 
perate. The prey was about to slip from their grasp, and 
they must either lose their position and possessions, or silence 
that preacher. They accordingly sent their officers to appre- 
hend him. These men were probably accustomed to execute 
such orders ; and not only were selected because naturally 
possessed of more firmness than sensibility, but also rendered 
7 



74 SERMONS. 

the more insensible by having practised the duties of their 
office. Like other Jews, they had heard much preaching by 
their Rabbis, and therefore expected to find a ranter, coming 
utterly short of them in dignity and solemnity. The idea 
they had, on leaving the presence of their superiors, to 
go forth and execute their orders, must probably have been, 
that the apprehension of a fanatical preacher, disturbing the 
public peace, would be an easy task, and rather a pastime. 
So they may have gone jocularly on from street to street, 
until they had come to the immense multitudes gathered in 
and around the temple celebrating the feast of tabernacles ; 
and although the crowd spreads out in every street far 
beyond the outer walls of the temple, yet it is not difficult to 
find the preacher. The chief interest of that multitude seems 
to radiate from the vast circumference to him as its centre. 
The priests and the altars are losing their hold on the heart 
of Israel. A mysterious power draws it in another direction. 
They press through the throng, and approach the hallowed 
spot. But what checks their rude steps ? why do they not 
advance to seize their prey, please their masters, and secure 
an extra fee ? They are confounded, not with fear, but with 
amazement, reverence, and an unwonted human sympathy. 
There he stands, incarnate Deity ! No fierceness of a 
mob-leader is seen in him, no cringing to formidable enemies, 
no caressing the populace. He stands alone and lofty in the 
meek dignity of a descended God. And they might first 
have said, " Never man looked like that man." But they 
felt the attractive force of the very power that disarmed them. 



CHRIST A PREACHER. 75 

There was a presence that annihilated the authority of San- 
hedrims ; there was a manifest virtue that acquitted him at 
the bar of their consciences. And before it they laid down 
their vile commission, and joined the devout and admiring 
hearers. This added to their wonder and reverence. Surely 
Moses never spake more according to the mind of God. 
Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, never spake with more 
authority than this man. He is a prophet of the living God ; 
and surely the elders of Israel never intended to arrest such 
a man ; and they returned, not with a prisoner, but with a 
nolle-prosequi^ a report that there was no ground of arrest. 
'' Never man spake like this man." 

"We are favored with more light than those men. And 
while we take their verdict for our theme, we may contem- 
plate it in a profounder sense than they attached to it. It 
contains a contrast which we would carry out, and say it 
still, after eighteen centuries : '• Never man spake like him." 
It will not be needful that we apply the contrast to his apos- 
tles and other servants, except indirectly. We will take the 
classes who have attempted to lead and instruct mankind, 
without Christ, or in opposition to him. We will first take 
the contrast these constables had in mind, and compare Christ 
as a teacher with 

I. The Scribes and Pharisees, whether ancient or 
modern. 

1. In the spirituality of his instructions. — The Jewish 
teachers and their modern imitators are distinguished promi- 
nently by their degrading conceptions of religion, morality. 



76 SERMONS. 

and worship. When the scribe opened the Scriptures, he 
saw there a vast cumbrous book of court-etiquette ; a descrip- 
tion of the dead formalities and proprieties which man must 
observe in approaching God. He knew nothing of the 
heart ; the body was with him supreme. Judgment and 
mercy passed for trifles ; while genuflexions, ablutions, pay- 
ing tithes, circumcision, and holy sprinklings were supreme. 
The whole force of Rabbinic learning was expended in split- 
ting hairs of casuistry, and in settling the form of a cere- 
mony ; and the whole power of Rabbinic eloquence was 
exhausted in enforcing its dead dogmas on the human con- 
science. But what a teacher is this ! He proclaims to man 
that the broken heart deploring its sins is the holocaust God 
accepts ; it is not Gerizim, Moriah, nor the Seven Hills, but 
the place where a believing heart is praying, where the most 
acceptable worship is to be performed. It is not the washing 
of tables nor hands, that can take the place of a pure heart. 
He proclaims that duty, morality, piety, goodness, greatness, 
all consist in love to God and man. When he ooens the 
Old Testament, every page glows with heavenly light, every 
line is instinct with life. God had ordained an outward ser- 
vice. But from the beginning he had sought for spiritual 
worship. Here the Lord Jesus stood entirely apart from the 
teachers of the church in his day. He had learned of none 
of them ; he had derived his authority, his knowledge and 
power, from none of them. 

He difiered from the Scribes and Pharisees 

2. In the dignity of his instruct io?is. — The teaching 



CHRIST A PREACHER. 77 

of the Rabbis was gravely puerile. Look at their casuistry, 
and that of their successors, -which you may find in the theo- 
logical standard works, and the guides to confessors, in the 
Roman church. There is a disgusting detail of analysis and 
distinction, to which no better name can be given than that 
of quiddling. Pass from all this to the Sermon on the 
Mount, and you have passed from a prison to the grand 
scenery and the invigorating atmosphere of a mountain. 
Surely never Jew or Gentile had taught as this Teacher that 
day taught, on that appropriate elevation. Contrast their 
conceptions of Jehovah with his. Those teachers had in- 
vested him with more power than the Jupiter of Paganism 
possessed. But he was a partial patron of their nation, 
irrespective of their character and conduct; partaking of 
their national pride and revenge ; relishing their flatter- 
ing ceremonies, and satisfied with their external homage. 
But Jesus stood in the midst of them, proclaiming the holi- 
ness of God, the certainty of the temporal destruction of 
Israel, the devastation of the temple, the dispersion of the 
nation, the introduction of the Gentiles to their privileges ; 
yea, and the personal and eternal damnation of the Jews, 
unless they repented, and returned to the way of obedience. 
He revealed the awful unity of God's requirements, the 
rigor of his justice, and, at the same time, the magnitude of 
his mercy. He unveiled the sublime mystery of his unity 
with the Father, and his distinctness from him. He revealed 
the mystery of the person of the Holy Spirit, the permanent, 
indwelling Deity in the church. 
7* 



78 SERMONS. 

Their views of the Messiah were low and earthly. He 
came announcing himself as the Messiah, so great that no 
earthly titles, or alliances, or palaces, or royal vestments, 
could add to his greatness. His was the greatness of per- 
son, of character, of office, of beneficence. His foe was not 
Caesar, but the mightier prince of a mightier empire. His 
battles were not carnal, but spiritual. His victories were 
conquests of the heart. His weapons were Truth and Good- 
ness. His deliverance was, from the power and curse of sin. 
His nation was the human race. His success was the union 
of the human family under his paternal sceptre. The salva- 
tion they proclaimed was political and temporary. He pro- 
claimed himself Lord of Hades, the deliverer from hell, the 
dispenser of eternal life. Surely no man ever spake like 
him. Moses promised Canaan to Israel in the wilderness, 
and his position and teachings were sublime. But what 
could equal the grandeur of one standing in this wilderness 
of sin, and pointing to himself as the Saviour of the soul ? 
Jonah was sublime in his solitary walks through the streets 
of Nineveh, revealing a holy and righteous God to the poor 
heathen ; but a greater than Jonah is here. Solomon was a 
magnificent prince, and the Queen of Sheba was astonished 
at his wisdom ; but a greater than Solomon is here. Com- 
pare, too, the low and limited views of Judaism which the 
Scribes entertained, with the sublime conceptions Christ 
revealed of its true genius and design. Mark the delicacy 
of his position. He was a Jew. He was to fulfil all right- 
eousness, — to sustain the law, and yet to prepare the way to 



CHRIST A PREACHER. 79 

abrogate it as a form, -^hile its spirit should take on the 
broad, catholic form of the New Testament. It has been 
well remarked that " the Pharisees were the Jesuits of Juda- 
ism, having all their craft, and all their superstition. In 
ritual, and priestly assumption, and tyranny, they were to 
Mosaic Judaism what Ultramontanism is to primitive Chris- 
tianity. They set aside the weightiest matter of the law for 
the minutest interest of their hierarchy. They disregarded 
justice and mercy, and made broad their phylacteries. They 
devoured widows' houses, and, for a pretence, made long 
prayers. Like the disciples of Loyola, they possessed them- 
selves of the secret springs of political and social mechanism. 
They were a social power, secret, compact, terrible ; full of 
intrigue, turbulence, bloodshed; the most active when they 
were the least seen ; the best servants of the devil when the 
most saintly. They were found 'in widows' houses,' and at 
Pilate's ear ; praying in the holy places, and instigating a 
mob to violence ; and they had loaded the generous laws of 
Moses with innumerable and intolerable traditions and restric- 
tions." Apart, above, and against this formidable associa- 
tion, armed with all the prestige of position, all the authority 
of office, and the power of their ill-earned wealth, stood 
the meek and lowly Jesus; and truly no man ever spake 
like him when he unveiled their hypocrisy, tore off the 
gloss of their commentaries, traditions, and enactments; 
revealing the law of Moses, pure, sublime, benevolent, 
and typical of better things to come. His great task was, 
to recover the Mosaic law from the mass of rubbish that 



80 SERMONS. 

lay upon it, — to reenact it, — to bring men to repentance 
by the power of its spiritual requirements. And yet he 
must prepare the way for the great change which his death 
should accomplish. No man or angel ever before or since 
has stood in such a position. None ever had such a task to 
perform. None ever spoke like him. Every word flashed 
back light on prophecy, history, ceremony, and command, or 
bore the hearer onward amid the grandest scenes of coming 
time and eternity. He showed, in all the bloody sacrifices, 
the one glorious offering of the Lamb of God for the sin of 
the world. The manna, the brazen serpent, pointed Jew and 
Gentile to the grandest of all truths for man : that he who 
furnishes medicine for the sick, and bread for human nourish- 
ment, has provided for the healing and nourishment of the 
soul to eternal life. 

This comparison might be carried much further, to show 
the contrast between their teaching and his, in regard to the 
church of the past and of the future, — their anticipations 
of the progress of religion, and his. We might demand if 
ever man ope»ed to human view, in a few words, so simple 
and sublime a view of the judgment day as is recorded by 
Matthew. Into whose mind had it ever before entered, or 
who ever uttered it, that the despised Nazarene was to utter 
his voice, and call up the dead of every nation and genera- 
tion, to be judged at his bar ? Surely, if we had heard him, 
wo should have said, never man spake like this man. 

And if we should make any other contrast between his 
preaching and that of the Jewish preachers, it would be in 



CHRIST A PREACHER. 81 

regard to the genial glow of sincerity, sympathy, zeal, 
and magnanimity, of the one. and the cold, dry, austere 
dogmatism of the other. Suffice it here to say, no preacher 
of the Pharisaic school, Jewish or Koman. ever originated an 
allegory like the story of the Prodigal Son. 

Let us now bring on the stage 

II. The Poets. — Many, perhaps the majority, of them 
would»utter]y shrink from such a comparison, and complain 
of it as unfair. To those who borrow their light from the 
Sun of Righteousness, it would be ungenerous to institute 
such a contrast. To those, also, who simply seek to indulge 
their own fancy in composition, or to recreate the wearied 
mind, and smooth one little path for some toiling traveller, it 
would be unfair to bring them to such a standard. As well 
refuse to burn the humble taper in the chamber of the sick, 
because the sun rose in the morning, as reject these humble 
contributions to human happiness, because Christ has revealed 
God, eternity, and salvation, to mankind. But there are 
admirers of poetry who have a reply to this appeal of the 
officers ; and when asked, " "VYho ever spake like this man? " 
their hearts reply, severally, Byron, Shakspeare, Yirgil, 
Horace, Homer. Our reply to this response of theirs would 
embrace several points. 

The teaching of your favorites has no concrete reality^ 
nor anything to meet the deepest wants of the soul. — If 
they teach history, then they are not poets in the higher 
sense ; and there are always better prose historians than 
they. So far as they are abstract and philosophic, I will 



82 SERMONS. 

refer to them under that class. They then draw on fancy 
for their statements of the past or the future. They add 
nothing to the stock of human information, the real sum of 
knowledge. As pure poetry it is concretely unreal. It 
may be abstractly true. But I am just now judging only 
by one standard. When you have heard a poet, you learn 
from him nothing of the past that does not belong to history, 
nothing of the present that belongs to poetry in particular, 
nothing of the future that is not taken from Christ or his 
prophetic pupils. Pure poetry has its place in human culti- 
vation and in civilized life. But it is simply the production 
of a more active imagination, and a livelier or profounder 
sensibility than ordinary, sympathizing with man and nature. 
But have the poets advanced mankind in knowledge? 
Which of them ? — Homer ? Yes ; we know some things 
from him as a historian. But what has he taught to make 
us holier ? Has he lifted the veil that hides from us the 
Eternal One, the infinite I Am ? Has he taught us why we 
suffer, how we may be forgiven ? Has he lifted the veil from 
the tomb ? Has he responded to the deepest, most earnest in- 
quiries of the human soul, as it struggles to pierce the dense 
black cloud of sin that shuts it in, and hides God, hides the 
future, hides the path of life ? No, he has not a line that 
is not midnight darkness compared to this one beam of light, 
" God is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship 
him in spirit and in truth; " a sentence on which turns the 
whole religious history of a man, a nation, controlling all its 
ecclesiastical architecture, its sacerdotal orders, its religious 



CHRIST A PREACHER. 83 

observances, its sacred days, and its modes of worship. It 
is the key-note of all iconoclasm, dashing to the earth every 
idol of the million heathen temples. Has Homer one glimpse 
of the spirit-world which makes us feel the pulse of sympathy 
beating quick and tender between earth and heaven, as does 
this declaration, ''there is joy in heaven, before the angels 
of God, over one sinner that repenteth"? Has the range 
of uninspired poetry one sentence that has been a resting- 
place for more weary pilgrim-feet, a pillow to more aching 
heads, a balm to more aching breasts, than this "come unto 
me, ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest"? No; Christ was a doctrinal, not a sentimental 
preacher. He gave indeed a simple rhythm to his sentences, 
for truth loves the measures of poetry. He gave poetic 
aspects of life and nature. He exercised the imagination. 
But he gave substantial facts, concrete realities, rather than 
abstract conceptions ; truth as addressed to the conscience and 
the profoundest sensibilities of the soul, adapted to meet its 
most urgent and most enduring necessities. Never poet spake 
like this man. 0, what eloquence ; what sublimity of reve- 
lation ; what pathos of appeal ; what terror of denunciation : 
what utterances of conscious deity, of divine condescension, 
of human humility ; what consciousness of unity with the 
Father ; what exulting avowals of union with his brethren ! 
Fade, fade, ye flickering tapers; stars, go out in light; the 
Sun of Righteousness is risen in Time's deep midnight hour ! 
Yirgil flattered princes. Homer celebrated human heroes 
and divine villains. Horace enjoyed a good joke, good wine, 



84 SERMONS. 

and jovial society of well-to-do practical men of common 
sense, with no extra scruples about a hereafter. Juvenal 
was keen, honest, useful in clearing some of the filth out of 
the Augean stable. And I speak here to the disparagement 
of none of them. Only I particularize their class under the 
general affirmation, never man spake like this man. We 
turn now to another class of teachers, to many of whom 
mankind have listened with great deference. I mean 

III, The Philosophers. — Here again I intend not to 
disparage the labors, attainments, and beneficial influences, of 
this class of men ; but, admitting all that is true concerning 
them, then to affirm that they never spake like the Son of 
God. It is of the very essence of philosophy that on subjects 
of supreme importance it is 

1. Conjectural. — The philosopher can do nothing more 
than conjecture in regard to divine existence and religious 
truths. But in that department we must have sanction and 
authority absolutely divine ; that is, infallible and omnipotent. 
Christ affirms this ; and philosophy, in her ablest expounder, 
admits it. Christ declares, *' No man hath seen God, at any time; 
the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, 
he hath declared him." And Socrates affirms it; he declared 
after his most earnest and profound reasoning, that he could 
find no certainty about divine and eternal things ; if we are 
to know God, he must descend to us, for we cannot ascend 
to him. 

Behold, then, one who claims for himself unity with the 
Father ; to have been with the Father from the beginning, 



CHRIST A PREACHER. 85 

to proclaim the truths for which the wisest and best had 
sighed and searched. Socrates, the true philosopher, was 
modest, and put philosophy in its true position. So far as it 
is the exercise of reason, on its appropriate subjects, it is 
conclusive, and of great value. But of the world that lies 
beyond it can reveal no more than prattling infancy. Hear, 
then, the eternal word proclaim the Father, the immortality 
of man, the judgment, the resurrection, redemption. When 
he comes to this world, benighted and bewildered, to teach 
his creatures, we expect to see a totally different manner from 
that of the philosophers. Opinions, counsels, conjectures, 
others may give ; he will give doctrines, positive statements 
of truths unknown, undiscoverable by human research. He 
can say, "I and my Father are one; I speak nothing with- 
out my Father." He affirms, and seldom resorts to logic; 
never, I believe, except when proving from the Scriptures, 
unless we consider his parables a form of logic. He always 
speaks like one having authority ; and not as the scribes, or 
Jewish philosophers. He is the Amen ; the faithful and true 
witness, who testified that he had seen. He did not specu- 
late about the trinity, but he affirmed at once his own dis- 
tinctness from the Father and the Spirit, and yet the divinity 
of each. He did not speculate about Satan and the apostate 
angels, and come to a probable result that they exist ; he 
affirmed it. He did not reason about atonement, regenera- 
tion, depravity, eternal damnation; he affirmed them, ex- 
plained them, urged them. And he differed again 

2. In the concrete form of his teachings from philoso- 
8 



86 SERMONS. 

phers. — Of course I refer now not to philosophers who sit 
at the feet of Jesus. They dare to tell us of a living and 
eternal person ; a being whose spiritual and personal exist- 
ence is essentially the model of ours. They dare to speak 
of deity incarnate ; God and man in Jesus. How boldly, 
how sublimely, you may see in Hugh Miller. He terminates 
one of his recent geological works thus: "There has been 
no repetition of the dynasty of the fish, of the reptile, of the 
mammal. The dynasty of the future is to have glorified man 
for its inhabitant ; but it is to be the dynasty, the kingdom^ 
not of glorified man made in the image of God, but of God 
himself in the form of man. In the doctrine of two conjoined 
natures, human and divine, and in the further doctrine that 
the terminal dynasty is to be peculiarly the dynasty of him 
in whom the natures are united, we find that required pro- 
gression beyond which progress cannot go. We find the 
point of elevation never to be exceeded meetly coincident 
with the final period never to be terminated, — the infinite 
in height harmoniously associated with the eternal in dura- 
tion. Creation and the Creator meet at one point, and in one 
person. The long ascending line from dead matter to man 
has been a progress Godwards ; not an asymptotical progress, 
but destined from the beginning to furnish a point of union, 
and occupying that point as true God and true man, as cre- 
ator and created, we recognize the adorable Monarch of all 
the future ! " 

That is the teaching of a Christian philosopher ; of one 
of whom Dr. Buckland said, at a meetino; of the British 



1 



CHRIST A PREACHER. 87 

Association, he had never been so much astonished in his 
life bj the powers of any man, as he had been by the geo- 
logical descriptions of Mr. Miller. That wonderful man 
described these objects with a facility which made him 
ashamed of the comparative meagreness and poverty of his 
own descriptions in the " Bridgewater Treatise," which had 
cost him hours and days of labor. He would give his left 
hand to possess such powei^s of descriptio?i as this man ; 
and, if it pleased Providence to spare his useful life, he, if 
any one, would certainly render science attractive and popu- 
lar, and do equal service to theology and geology. 

But your pagan philosophers can talk only of abstractions, 
such as Deity, laws of nature, moral evil, absolute existence. 
These are very good words in their place ; so are humanity, 
skill, fraud. But they are all abstract ; and if you should 
call a friend of yours humanity, you would deal with him as 
these philosophers deal with God. God is a concrete, an 
actual personal existence. Christ speaks of a personal God, 
a personal devil. God, he says, paints the lilies ; it is not 
laws of nature that do it. Abstract teaching has its place ; 
but, from necessity, it is not practical ; and yet a teacher in 
the great concerns of the soul is, at the same time, a physi- 
cian. To reason about nosology and therapeutics by the bed- 
side of a man in fever, and do nothing more, is as cruel as it 
is to mock at disease. Christ was a practical teacher. In 
religion we need to know what to believe ; but preeminently, 
what to do. He solved the one great problem that has 
agitated, not the minds of men, so much as their hearts ; not 



88 SERMONS. 

the philosophers alone, but the jnillions of immortal beings that 
resorted to pagan temples and Jewish priests, without find- 
ing peace. That problem is, What must I do to be saved ? 
He based morality on piety ; and the first step into piety is 
not circuitous and remote, but a simple confidence in what he 
is, has said, and has done ; " this is the work of God. that 
ye believe on him whom he hath sent." This is too brief a 
consideration of so important a point; but we must leave it to 
consider one more class ; 

IV. The Pretenders and Impostors. — They are of 
many grades, and various shades. But they all illustrate 
the glory of him who spake as never man spake. They 
all betray their true character, by extravagance, in some form. 
His claim was the loftiest ever set up on this earth. It was, 
at the same time, put forth under circumstances which fully 
tested its genuineness. He always spoke of himself Every- 
thing in his teaching concentrated in himself He made all 
the law and the prophets point to him. Here is a pretension 
that none but God can maintain, without the most satanic 
arrogance, pride, and blasphemy. On this ^oint there is no 
middle ground to be taken. Christ is either God, or the 
chief of apostates and blasphemers. He claims to be God, 
and yet to be man. Joanna Southcott claimed to have a 
commission from God. Mohammed pretended he was Allah's 
chief prophet. Emmanuel Swedenborg, too, claimed to be a 
special prophet, and the chief prophet ; actually setting aside 
Christ and all others. But Christ claimed to be true and 
very God, the Son of the Father, and the Son of a virgin 



CHRIST A PREACHER. 89 

woman. And where and how did he assert these wonderful 
pretensions ? Among vigilant enemies, at the metropolis, in 
the temple, among the Rabbis, without patronage or pres- 
tige, without armies or princes on his side. He had thun- 
dered on Sinai in former days ; and the mountain trembled as 
he gave forth the law. But now he does not "lift up his 
voice, nor break a bruised reed." Let us enter the crowd, 
and follow his preaching from place to place, and see whether 
he is a pretender. 

1. An impostor ivill chiefly address the senses and 
imaginations of his followers. — But while the Lord Jesus 
is constantly crowned with a halo of divine glory, it is a glory 
manifested mainly to the cool judgment and the spiritual 
perception of the intelligent inquirer, rather than the vulgar 
sense and fevered imagination. Popes, cardinals, and Roman 
and pagan priests, are constantly working on the senses and 
imaginations of their deluded followers. Look at a recent 
assemblage of Roman bishops in Baltimore, covered with tin- 
sel and finery. How apart is Jesus sitting on the mount, in 
his plain robe, from all this foolery and trickery ! How dif- 
ferent from the Pharisees, too ! No phylactery, no texts of 
scripture sewed on the garment ; affected dignity and sepa- 
rateness from men. All his dignity was discovered in the 
awe his character inspired in the wicked, and the admira- 
tion it excited in the good. There were prodigies accom- 
panying his birth and his ministry. It must needs be so. 
God could not tread on the earth, and walk among demons 
and diseases ; but earth, and demons, and diseases, must give 
8* 



90 SERMONS. 

signs to man that his God and their God was here. There 
were prodigies ; but they caught not the vulgar eye so 
strongly as they convinced the serious and judicious. Wise 
men in the east, Simeons and Annas in the temple, humble 
worshippers in the hill country, saw them. But vulgar 
Herods and vulgar prelates, and the great hungry mass, saw 
them not. Prophets, John the forerunner, angels, stars, all 
combined to announce him. Even Plato has described him, 
as if inspiration had wandered for a moment to Greece. He 
spoke of an inspired teacher that should come. He said this 
teacher must be poor, and void of all qualifications but those 
of virtue alone. Thus one of the prince of philosophers 
points mankind, not to a philosopher as their great teacher, 
but to one whose preeminent quality was his goodness. He 
said that a wicked world would not bear his instructions and 
reproofs ; and, therefore, within three or four years after 
he began to preach, he would be persecuted, imprisoned, 
scourged, and at last be put to death. He performed mira- 
cles ; but always checked that vulgar enthusiasm they could 
so readily have aroused. Others have put forth all their 
real or pretended claims to admiration and confidence as fast 
and as far as possible. His exhibition of himself is marked 
with an unafiected divine reserve, which manifests the pur- 
pose of planting an eternal kingdom in the understanding 
and heart of man. The witnesses of his miracles are for- 
bidden to be clamorous in announcing them. His whole 
manner shows the desire of a calm winning of men's intelli- 
gent confidence, and of their sympathy and gratitude to a 



CHRIST A PREACHER. 91 

suffering benefactor. He combined authority with gentleness, 
as man cannot do. He combined human with divine authority. 
As man, he spake like Elijah, Noah, Moses ; with the awful 
majesty and severity of Ezekiel he uttered on Scribes and 
Pharisees denunciations the most terrible. Did ever the 
fiery Ezekiel or the rude shepherd of Tekoa speak like this 
man, when he sat at the Pharisee's table and cried out, 
" Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye 
are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over 
them are not aware of them. The blood of all the prophets 
which was shed from the foundation of the world shall be 
required of this generation." Did ever the tender pathos 
of Jeremiah equal his when he wept over Jerusalem ? All 
the beauty and power of the prophetic race met in him ; so 
that as a man no one of them ever spake like him. But 
when he said, " I am the Son of God; before Abraham 
was, lam ! " then he spake as mere men could not speak. 
When he said, " I am the bread of life ; I am the resur- 
rection and the life ; I give the water of life ; I give the 
weary rest ; I am Israel's shepherd, laying down my life 
for the sheep," then he speaks as neither man nor angel 
can speak. He aimed to secure boundless love to himself; all 
the love that God can claim. Here all comparison and even 
contrast fails. " Alexander and I," exclaimed Napoleon, 
" have set up the empire of force ; but Jesus Christ established 
the enduring empire of love." And when you see the pure 
and undying power of his words, you must exclaim, -'Never 
man spake like him." They converted Saul of Tarsus ; 
they converted the rude Gauls that invaded the Roman 



92 SERMONS. 

empire. They made the Reformation; which is the well- 
spring of modern civilization. They have created modern 
society. They bind the hearts of men to law, to order, to 
society, to freedom, to truth, to man, to God. They are 
mightier than all law, than all philosophy, than all religious 
theories, than armies, than princes, popes, or devil. They 
made the noblest body of men England ever saw. They made 
the feeble mightier than royal tyrants. They convey to man's 
heart the omnipotence that rules not matter, but the soul, — 
the omnipotence of divine love. If these are not the words 
of an eternal, almighty being, then they must die ; and all 
that is built on them must perish. But they are the words 
of life to the soul, to the church, to the nations. Christ 
saw the glory of his own kingdom. But what quietness 
and reserve in announcing it ! Everything is said to 
give a basis to an intelligent faith ; nothing to create 
worldly enthusiasm. Impostors resort to prejudices, national 
or religious. Peter the Hermit ranted and raved ; and all 
Europe was moved by it, because he aroused a worldly 
prejudice against the Saracen, and a fanatical zeal for holy 
places. How easy it would have been, when that multitude 
were shouting hosannas, and strewing their garments 
under his feet, to lift the trumpet to his lips, and cry, 
'' To arms ; rescue the desecrated temple of Israel's God ; 
lift Judah's banner over the Roman eagle !" But not an 
appeal to passion or prejudice, not a word of flattery, does 
he utter. He promises the cross here, and heaven here- 
after. He wins no golden opinions by proclaiming indis- 
criminate salvation, as so many have done in his name. He 



CHRIST A PREACHER. 93 

describes no sensuous heaven, like Swedenborg's ; no sensual 
heaven, like Mohammed's ; but a heaven for which nothing 
qualifies us, without purity of heart. 

How precious and indispe7isable a study are the four 
gospels ! — They contain the earthly history of this wonder- 
ful being. They contain a few of the wonderful words he 
uttered; enough to complete our education for earth and 
heaven. These words will bear a more profound investiga- 
tion, a more intense meditation ; they will last us longer, 
they will do us infinitely more service, than all the poets, 
philosophers, and religious teachers, of Adam's race. Study 
them. Keep them. 

We see why the whole New Testament is of binding 
authority, — One of Christ's promises was, that when he 
had done the great work of atonement, his Spirit should 
descend on his disciples, to secure a completeness to the rev- 
elation of his grace. They have not an idea of which 
we cannot find the germ in his words. But the expansion 
and application of them needed his infallible Spirit to secure 
its freedom from error. 

The words of Christ will fix our destiny. — If we 
believe them, and trust him, we are saved ; if we believe 
them not, we are damned. Other books, then, we may read 
and criticize. To the Scriptures we must bow the entire soul, 
with all its faculties. We shall have reached the highest 
degree of wisdom and of taste, when we shall see more beauty 
and glory, shall taste more sweetness, and feel more power, 
in the words that fell from his lips, than in any and all other 
words. 



VI. 

JESUS, THE GREAT MISSIONARY. 



"lor, t\)e S)on of iHan is come to seek anti to sa&c tf)at tafjtcf) kas 
lost."— Luke 19: 10. 

The meaning of that word — lost — is the separating-point 
from which diverge the most important sentiments that divide 
the nominally Christian world. It affects essentially all our 
religious sentiments, character, and career. 

The fundamental error on this point respects two aspects 
of human nature — man as the subject of law ; and man in 
his capacity for a spiritual life. 

The views of man's guilt and ill-desert entertained by 
some are comparatively slight. They hold in abhorrence 
only certain crimes against civil laws and social order. 
They excite and they allow no deep and heart-breaking con- 
victions for spiritual offences ; they arouse no fears of endless 
punishment. They go to the neglecter of religion, and per- 
suade him to become more attentive to religious truths and 
duties. They go to the pagan, and urge him to embrace a 
purer rite, a more rational theology. Their appeals are not 
made to the conscience, to start it from deep slumbers, and 



JESUS, THE GREAT MISSIONARY. 95 

make it echo the thunders of coming judgment. And when 
they find it awakened, thej proclaim to it no peace-speaking 
sacrifice for sin ; in fact, they censure this very alarm, and 
attribute it to ignorance and error. Hence they find nothing 
in man's prospects to enlist deeply their own solicitude. 
Hence they accord not with us in our endeavors to awaken a 
slumbering world by strong appeals to make it hear the 
voice of an insulted Deity, of an outraged Father, of the 
threatening majesty of heaven. 

Thus we differ from them in our estimate of the extent 
and purity of the precepts of the divine law. We consider 
all the world as its guilty violators. Equally antipathetic 
are our views of man's spiritual character. We believe that 
the spiritual image of God is effaced from the human soul ; 
man is fallen, terribly, desperately fallen ; the gold has lost 
its lustre. All men are wanderers from the home of the 
soul, the bosom of God ; and they must all be persuaded to 
return. The malady of sin lies deeply fixed in the immortal 
part, the soul ; and, tberefore, intellectual elevation and 
social refinement do not remove it, and have no tendency to 
remove it. We regard the Gospel applied by God's Spirit as 
the sole remedy. 

Are we right in our views ? We are willing to ask ; and 
wait candidly for the reply to these questions : How must I 
regard human nature, myself, and my fellow-men? What 
is my highest duty with respect to my immortal self, and 
what with respect to my fellow-men ? We desire truth, and 
only truth. We desire to see things now, as far as practica- 



96 SERMONS. 

ble, as we shall see them, when the illusions of time shall 
have given place to the light of eternity. We have also a 
desire to vindicate our course to an intelligent world ; and, if 
we are right, to become in our turn the reprovers of its 
unbelieving indiflference. 

Brethren, we spend this tender and sacred hour in con- 
templating, devoutly, 

Jesus, the great Missionary. 

He is the Judge that ends the strife. He is the Logos, 
the Truth. All his views were truth, all his sentiments 
righteousness. There was, even in his finite human nature, 
no error in theory, no misapprehension of facts, no exag- 
gerated impulse, no passion. He says he came to seek and 
to save that which is lost. That looks to us like calling 
himself the Great Missionary, the Pattern of all missionaries, 
the Founder of our missionary institutions. We go forth to 
seek and to save that which is lost ; and we believe that our 
views and our course are an imitation of his, and an obedience 
to his last command, " Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the Gospel to every creature." 

We propose, then, to examine the meaning of the term 
*' lost," as here employed, by the views which Jesus enter- 
tained of men, and by his conduct toward them. By 

I. His estimate of man. — What extent of meaning 
did he attach to the term " lost " ? 

1. He regarded man as a depraved and apostate spirit. 
— Depraved and apostate are relative terms, referring to a 



JESUSj THE GREAT MISSIONARY. 97 

certain standard of perfection and excellence. Man was made 
for great moral purposes, to conform to a type of perfect 
excellence, to attain great heights of moral elevation. Such 
was, in fact, the original, native tendency of his constitution. 
And there is his dignity. Now, if the Saviour considered 
the present state of man as conformed to that type, then he 
did not regard him as depraved and apostate. And happily 
we are left to no conjectures here. His ideas of holiness are 
seen in his own character and actions ; of which it might be 
enough here to say, that all men consider them perfect, and 
yet totally unlike those of any other man. 

Now, whom did Jesus regard as possessing that spiritual 
life which consists in rising above created good, to live in 
God, to feast on his smile, and breathe the atmosphere of his 
love ? Was it the poor idolater of the surrounding pagan 
tribes ? Was it the proud, sanctimonious Pharisee, inwardly 
fall of putrefaction as the grave ? Was it the infidel, sensual 
Sadducee, who ridiculed all pretensions to spiritual commu- 
nion ? Was it the crowd who followed him, not for truth and 
spiritual aliment, but for bread ? Was it the rich young ruler, 
so amiable, so pure, so sincere, who went away sorrowful 
when he learned that God and Mammon cannot be loved and 
served together ? Nay, was it the half-converted Peter, 
whom he rebuked as fearing, in the spirit of Satan, the sacri- 
fice of self? Or John and James, who then looked, in serving 
God, for the honors of a temporal kingdom ? Was it, in a 
word, the being, of whom it is recorded, that Jesus "knew 
9 



98 SERMONS. 

what was in man," and therefore trusted not himself to him? 
Oj no ! the Son of God walked like a living man among the 
tombs; and the silence of the second death had reigned 
there forever, if his own omnipotent voice had not cried, 
" Lazarus, come forth." 

We have another exhibition of the Saviour's views of what 
constitutes the spiritual life, in his benedictions. "Blessed 
are the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, the peace-makers, 
they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, they who 
love him more than parents and possessions ; nay, that for- 
sake all things, even life itself, for his sake and the Gospel's." 
Now, can we believe that he considered mankind generally 
in his day, or that he considers the men of this or any other 
period, as pure in heart, peace-makers, seeking spiritual 
good with an eagerness like that of the corporeal appetites ; 
seeking their rest in God, as the weary body seeks its couch ; 
longing for God, as the hunted hart pants for the water- 
brook, or as the shipwrecked mariner longs for morning 
light ? 

Our Saviour again presents the standard of human excel- 
lence : "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, soul, mind, and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself" 
And did he think that idolaters, the profane, the neglecters 
of God's service, those who love pleasure more than God, 
the proud, the covetous, the sensual — did he believe that they 
were good, when compared with that standard. Thou shalt love 
God supremely and perfectly ? Or the envious, ambitious, 
fraudulent, cruel, tyrannical, impure, slanderers ? Do they 



JESUS, THE GREAT MISSIONARY. 99 

love others as themselves ? Do they in India, Africa, Europe, 
America ? Did they in any part or age of the world ? Ask 
history. It is, indeed, too generally the record of the pow- 
erful. But it shows what all would do, if their circumstances 
permitted. And have the powerful been good ? Have their 
lives been examples of piety ? Have their energies been 
consecrated to the public welfare ? There has been a Cyrus, 
an Aristides, a Joshua, a St. Louis, an Alfred. But they 
are the exceptions. The history of kingdoms is a record of 
wars and their horrors, of frauds and oppressions. What 
says the social state of mankind ? Let the condition of 
woman speak in all the lands where human nature has acted 
out its unobstructed tendencies. "What is a Turkish wife, 
an Indian mother, a Hindoo widow ? Come home, then, to 
the criminal codes, and criminal courts, and criminal estab- 
lishments, of Christian America. Leave the poetry of the 
parlor ; lay down that enchanting book which enraptures you 
with its visions of human dignity and loveliness ; leave that 
circle of refinement, where a favored few have separated 
themselves from the vulgar, to enjoy a higher intellectual 
and social life, and come with me out among the mass of this 
moving population. Let us go into the lanes and alleys, the 
almshouses, the hospitals, the prisons. Shrink not, admirer 
of human, nature ; this is man, godlike man. Do you know 
that thousands of the very children of this city are liars, 
thieves, impure, profane ? And what of the pagan world ? 
0, let the missionary tell you, who, having gone out to make 
common interest with the heathen, has examined deeply into 



100 SERMONS. 

his character. Here are nearly five hundred millions ; and 
yet the portrait in the first chapter of the Epistle to the 
Romans remains fearfully accurate. And does this being, 
man, remam as he was, when, coming pure and perfect from 
his Creator's hands, he was pronounced very good ? And 
what commission have diseases and death in this fair world ? 
Did God make man for this ? You must say. Yes. The 
Bible says, "By si7i, death entered into the world: and so 
death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.'' Each 
breath you draw marks the death of three of your race. No 
place is so exalted, none so sacred, that disease cannot invade 
it. No tie is so tender and so precious that death will spare 
it. And when you visit the burial-yard, ask whether man is 
as God made him ! Was he made to be the slave of Satan, 
the sport of tempests, and the prey of death ? Was he 
made for poverty and filth, for rags and woe ? 0. no ! he is 
fallen. The race is fallen. If we want another test, we 
have it in the pure worship which Jesus rendered the Father. 
Place this by the side of human religions. The greater part 
of them are bloody, and seem to have preserved the tradi- 
tion that "without shedding of blood is no remission" of 
sins. But they are also impure, and thus declare the deep 
apostasy of man, when his very religions remove him further 
from God and holiness. If he makes a Jupiter, he is a 
monster of lust ; a Mars, he drives his chariot over the 
dying ; a Mercury, he is chief of robbers ; a Juggernaut, he 
feasts on mangled human limbs. And when a pure revela- 

4 

tion is given to him first in a single nation, he turns back- 



JESUS, THE GREAT MISSIONARY. 101 

ward ever towards idolatry ; and when Christianity is given 
to the nations, they pervert and pervert it, until, of the two 
hundi'ed and fifty millions who possess it, one hundred and 
ninety millions are sunk in superstition and idolatry little 
better than paganism itself The moral condition of France 
and Spain and Italy, the history of religious persecutions 
conducted in the name of Jesus Christ, and as the expan- 
sion of his Spirit and as obedience to his precepts, appear to 
us sad confirmations of the truth of our view, that man is 
lost, because he is a depraved and apostate creature. 

We learn again our Saviour's estimate of men, in the 
direct expression of his views. Hear him declare : " Broad 
is the road that leadeth to destruction, and many go in 
thereat, while narrow is the way that leadeth to life, and/ei^? 
there be that find it. If any man will come after me, let 
him " — what ? cultivate his good heart ? — No, '' deny him- 
self" And in how many ways does he describe us as poor, 
and miserable, and blind, and sick, and weary, burdened, im- 
prisoned, enslaved, dead, exposed to endless destruction ! If 
not sick, we have no need of him ; if not sinners, he has no 
message to us, for "they that are whole need not a phy- 
sician, but they that are sick." In his conversation with 
Nicodemus, he says that we must be regenerated ; and that 
whoever is not, cannot be saved. And mark his emphatic 
reason: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." By 
our natural birth, we inherit only that which cannot inherit 
heaven. In the natural birth there is a terrible entailment 
of degeneracy ; and so there needs a supernatural birth, a 
9* 



102 SERMONS. 

birth of the Spirit. With all this in view, it is impossible 
to believe that Jesus regarded man as a refined, noble, ele- 
vated being, — as, in his present state, the type of perfection. 
He never says it, he never intimates it. We look in vain 
for passages in all his addresses, as well as in all the writings 
of his disciples, to find a language or a sentiment like that 
which we constantly hear about the purity, and nobleness, 
and virtue, of man. 

2. He regarded man^ also^ as a condemned criminal. — 
According to his saying to Nicodemus, " He that believeth 
not is condemned already." This was said in connection 
with a comparison of man's moral condition to the physical 
state of the Israelites who were bitten by the fiery serpents. 
They, says the Saviour, were to be healed by looking at the 
uplifted symbol of God's righteous judgments against their 
sins. So we, who are dying beneath the righteous anger of 
God, are to be healed by believing on him who was lifted up 
for us on the accursed tree. But whoever believes not 
remains in his state of condemnation. This condemnation 
includes two facts, — that of being left in transgression, and 
that of being subjected to punishment. Jesus did regard 
men as sinners. But our ideas of sin are superficial and 
unimpressive ; those of Jesus were deep and awful. He 
traced each outward sin to the heart, the fountain of spiritual 
death ; and he detected sin in the heart where no outward 
sign was given to man ; and he showed that it were better to 
lose limb and life, reputation, and each dear interest of earth, 
rather than to remain a sinner ; for sin is the transgression 



J 



103 



of the law, — of God's holy law. And not only has sin 
taken possession of the heart of man, but, without supernat- 
ural aid, that possession must be indefinitely permanent. 
There is no tendency in human depravity toward self-recovery 
and perfection. In all that we have known of it, its course 
is ever downward, downward, and forever downward. Sin 
never yet exhausted itself in this world, nor in one heart. 
Every instance of recovery from its dominion is called by 
Jesus the conquest of a strong man armed by a stronger than 
he. And while man is thus a sinner, a transgressor of law, 
he is exposed to eternal death. If the warnings and expos- 
tulations of Christ do not teach that, then they are to us 
without meaning. ''Woe unto thee, Chorazin, and to thee, 
Bethsaida ; for it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, 
Sodom and Gomorrah, than for you ! And thou, Caper- 
naum, exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell ! What 
is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose 
his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his 
soul ? There shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of 
teeth." Dives, after death, " lifted up his eyes m hell, being 
tormented." The net and fishes, the wise and foolish vir- 
gins, the wheat and tares, the separation of the sheep and 
goats, the treatment of the unfaithful steward, all tell us 
what he believes concerning man's eternal destiny. But 
nothing he uttered is more terrible than the declaration that 
he him^self will say, at last, to the wicked, "Depart, ye 
cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his 
angels ! " Men may close their ears and shut their eyes to 



104 SERMONS. 

this, but it is the word of God. Men may refuse to hear it ; 
but there it stands, a yet unfulfilled prophecy, made, if pos- 
sible, more certain to us by the past fulfilment of the others 
which surround it. Yes, as certain as was the destruction 
of Babylon and Tyre, the deluge of water and the flood of 
fire on a guilty world, — as certain and as terrible as was 
the destruction of Jerusalem, — will be the utterance and 
execution of those terrific words. And as idle and impotent 
will be the scoffs and self-reasonings of this day as were those 
of that day to arrest the judgments of God. But who can 
measure their meaning ? " Cursed! " It is terrible to be 
cursed by a man, a wicked man, without cause ; but to 
be cursed by a Father, — by a being who never errs in judg- 
ment ; a being who never condemns unjustly ; a being who 
suffered to save us ; a being who has long expostulated in 
view of this very judgment; a being who commands the 
elements of the universe to execute his purposes, — a being 
who ranks his glorious perfections to flash conviction to the 
centre of my guilty conscience ! 

The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which is 
lost, — lost to God, to itself, to heaven, to hope, to purity, and 
peace, and love, — lost forever. I have said that we have 
more exalted views of man than either the sceptic or semi- 
sceptic philosophy contain. We have. We believe in his 
original dignity ; and we have such views of that, that man, 
in his present state, is a source of constant distress to us ; 
and we desire perpetually to be proclaiming in his hearing 
the dignity he has lost. We would say perpetually to him, 



JESUS, THE GREAT MISSIONARY. 105 

as we should to the degenerate descendant of a noble family, 
still wearing their name and title, and even imitating their 
lofty bearing, "Shame, shame on thee! Thy name, thy 
palace, thy lordly mien, are all thy reproach ! " We have 
such exalted views, also, of the perfectibility of man, that we 
cannot endure to see the world contenting itself with any- 
thing short of the image of God, and of perfect communion 
with him. Man was a noble being when God said of him, 
He is good. But he aspired too high. He tried to become 
a centre of light, and strength, and happiness, to himself, 
and to be independent of God. He withdrew from God's 
spiritual dominion, and God abandoned his spiritual nature 
to itself, and made him, in his wretchedness, a spectacle to 
himself and to the universe. The brute creation have fled 
him, for he has become their enemy. The very earth has 
felt the blighting curse that lighted on him. He was chased 
from Eden's happy garden ; and the cherub sentry, with 
flaming sword, still stands to bar his return. Happy Eden, 
scene of our sweet communion with God ! — happy Eden, 
witness of our dignity and of our blessedness ! — thou art 
lost to us, and we to thee ! My brethren, we are strong and 
high believers in the dignity of human nature ; no man 
shall deprive us of this our boasting ; yet, not in human 
nature as it is, but as it was, and as, by grace, it may 
become. But, as he is, man is lost. And we want to sit 
down by the side of every brother of the human race, and 
weep with him for the crown which is fallen from our brow, 
the home and the heaven which we have lost. We want to 



106 SERMONS. 

undo the deceiving of liis pride, and sigh and pray with him 
for the recovery of our birthright. 

But are the heathen, who have not our light, exposed to 
perdition ? A careless world, unwilling to make thorough 
inquiry into the condition and prospects of other men, com- 
placently wraps itself in the mantle of an imagined charity, 
and says, "The mercy of God w^ill never consign them to 
endless punishment, when they have sincerely done their 
best according to the light they enjoy." And there, indeed, 
we are agreed with the world ; but we are forced to stop 
there, for we have too many proofs that there are few of 
them who will have that plea. We find, also, a part of the 
church, though unable to hope much for the pagan world, 
yet unwilling to adopt the harsh conclusion that these hun- 
dreds of millions are rushing blindly to endless ruin, and pre- 
ferring to rest in a vague hope that it will not be so, rather 
than to search the Scriptures, to ascertain if God has given 
us any instruction on the subject, and imposed upon us any 
responsibility in the matter. Here we shall fail of time for 
a solemn topic. The sneers of the world terrify us not in 
such a matter. The charge of cruelty troubles not our con- 
science, while we seek not to make their destruction a fact, 
but to ascertain whether they are really exposed to destruc- 
tion, in order that we may aid them to escape it. Indeed, if 
we were not distrustful of our own imperfect motives, we 
should say that ours is the true charity, which welcomes 
evidence, though it bring us to the results of distressing 
sympathy and of self-denying labor. We are inclined to 



107 



suspect the depth of that charity which, to save its possessor 
pain, and spare him labor, settles a great principle of the 
divine government, a great future fact, not by examining 
God's testimony, but by appealing to a mere human sensi- 
bility. K we consult our sympathies, we say, "The poor 
pagans will not go to a miserable eternity, but where they 
will go we know not." But when we ask, '• What has God 
asserted on this subject?" we rise from the answer with 
heavy hearts. The cry of the perishing then swells on our 
ear, — " Come over and help us ! " — until we wish for a 
thousand tongues to proclaim to them the way of life. An 
outline of God's testimony is all we can here present. If 
we examine their lives, considered in the light of a disciplin- 
ary, probationary, or preparatory state, we cannot believe 
that they go to heaven. They, as well as we, must be 
regenerated, and that in this world. But we find them, as 
in Paul's day, infanticides, liars, adulterers, covenant-break- 
ers, bestial, sensual, devilish, murderers of mothers. All 
this seems to us a preparation, not for heaven, but for perdi- 
tion. We find them, too, just what the Canaanites were, 
whom God, in his anger, swept from the earth, but surely 
not into heaven. They are idolaters, if there ever were any, 
and God declares that such cannot enter the kingdom of 
heaven. Again, to believe that they are in the way to 
heaven is to regard all the apostles' anxieties and labor for 
their salvation as unfounded, extravagant, and useless. And, 
again, the apostle has fully reasoned out the case in two 
places. In the one he shows that they sin against their light 



108 SERMONS. 

as we do against ours ; in the other, this is his missionary 
argument: '-'For whosoever shall call on the name of the 
Lord shall be saved. But how shall they call on him in 
whom they have not believed ? and how believe in him of 
whom they have not heard ? and how hear without preach- 
ers? and how preach unless sent?'' Ko, my brethren; it 
may be natural sympathy, or it may be distrust of God's 
testimony, which says, " Let the heathen alone," but it is 
not enlightened piety. Then we are right in our estimate 
of man; then we should not be dazzled by his external 
appendages, his intellectual and social traits ; then we may 
say to the higher and lower Deistic philosophies : Your 
boast is vain when you claim the exclusive admiration of 
human nature, for we have higher views than either of you. 
You would satisfy man with certain social excellences, cer- 
tain pagan virtues, certain moral sentiments, which have little 
or no reference to God ; but we believe that man was made 
to live in God, and to reflect his image to the universe. We 
hold, too, the key that unlocks the deep mystery of man's 
present condition. A writer of your school says, " I resem- 
ble, Lord, the night-globe, which, in the obscure path 
where thy finger leads it, reflects from the one side eternal 
light, and, on the other, is plunged in mortal shades." 
" How abject, how august," says one of another school, " how 
complicate, how wonderful, is man ! " There is something 
great in man, and something abject. To us the mystery is 
solved. Man was great, good, godlike, in his powers and in 
his character ; but he is fallen in chai'acter, and, in that fall, 



109 



has dragged down his powers and native sentiments; leaving, 
like a volcanic rupture, fragments of an Eden, scattered 
flowers that live here an exotic life. 

^Ye shall now consider, much more briefly, Jesus as our 
pattern, 

II. 1^ HIS TREATMENT OF MEN. — We SCO in what light 
he regarded man ; and how his holy soul was moved with 
compassion towards him. We now demand, what did his 
compassion lead him to do ? K to make great sacrifices, then 
his views of man's lost estate must have been very strong ; 
for, although it may be love, it is also foolish love that makes 
a greater sacrifice and effort for another than his necessities 
demand. But when a being of infinite intelligence makes 
great sacrifices, greater than we are capable of estimating, 
the evidence is complete, that the misery threatening or 
actually affecting those whom he aids is equally immeasur- 
able by us. On the subject of the condescension and sacri- 
fices of the Lord Jesus Christ, the language of the Bible is 
deep, mystic, suggestive. He had a glory with the Father 
before the world was, but he left it. What was that glory ? 
we inquire; where and how did he leave it in becoming 
a man ? The veil of flesh hides it from our sight. He was 
rich ; when, where, in what ? The clouds and darkness of 
an infinite majesty rest around his person, and hide from 
feeble mortals the splendors of his primitive empire. But 
he became poor. He took on him or was invested with flesh. 
Then he was, before he was flesh ; he was before Abraham ; 
he was David's root and lord, before he was his offspring and 
10 



110 SERMONS. 

successor. Mysterious language ! He took on him, at the 
very instant when angels were adoring him as the only- 
begotten of the Father, the form of a servant ; and came to 
be despised and rejected, to hear hisses and taunts and blas- 
phemies, instead of hosannas and hallelujahs. He exchanged 
heaven's diadem for Judea's thorns, and the robes of light 
for Pilate's faded and discarded garment; he forsook the 
palace, where he was sovereign, for the judgment-hall, where 
he was bound, and buffeted, and scourged, and condemned. 
He left his body-guard of holy and mighty angels, to be at 
the mercy of wicked and puny mortals who hated hun. He 
was the Lord of the universe, but he was born of one of the 
lowliest inhabitants of earth's obscurest corner. He was 
Prince of life, but he tasted death for every man. This the 
Scriptures call his sacrifice for man's salvation. But they 
make all this the lightest feature of the image of his cross. 
When they would start our imaginations on the path to his 
expiatory sufferings, they drop a few phrased, which are not 
so much intended to instruct as to impress and overwhelm 
us with godly fear and sympathy. "My soul is exceed- 
ing sorrowful; even unto death." What made him sor- 
rowful — so sorrowful ? Nothing in all that was external 
around him there; nothing that the Evangelists mention. 
Again ; in the garden his bodily frame passes through 
an unparalleled excitement of agony ; but from no appar- 
ently adequate cause. To attribute it to his fear of cruci- 
fixion, or to sorrow for his cause and friends, betrays the 
most entire disrespect. Again ; his agonizing cry, Why hast 



JESUS, THE GREAT MISSIONARY. Ill 

thou forsaken me? permits us to conjecture that there is 
something in what the Son of God endured in our stead and 
for our salvation, which we may understand only when our 
intellectual powers shall be expanded by the light, and our 
moral powers purified by the love of heaven. And when 
Jesus said, with emphasis, " God so loved the world as to 
give his only begotten Son," we understand that this gift 
was so costly, and there was in some way such an expenditure 
and sacrifice, that it not only showed God's love to man 
more clearly than all else he had ever said or done, but also 
that it shows the immensity of that love. And so, when the 
apostle reasons for the encouragement of faith, "If God 
spared not his own Son," we understand that this not 
sparing, and freely giving up, involve something which we 
are now incapable of comprehending, but by which God 
designs to affect our hearts and form our characters more 
powerfully than by all his words or works. If the under- 
standing of any man forbids the flow of emotion until this 
veil is removed, then his heart will never feel fully in this 
life what Paul felt when he said, " The love of Christ con- 
straineth us, because we thus judge that if one died for all, 
then were all dead." We were all dead, and he died for the 
dead ; and, in dying, he showed his conviction of our state of 
spiritual death. 

But we have done with proofs of man's apostate and ruined 
state. It is to us a fact. The Word of God declares it, and 
also another fact which rests on all this gloomy cloud, a rain- 
bow-truth, '' The Son of Man has come to seek and to save 



112 SERMONS. 

that which was lost." 0, then, ye scoffing economists, let us 
hear no more your severe reproofs of our poor expenditures 
of property in the missionary cause. Jesus is the master 
whom we follow, though at too great a distance ; Jesus is 
the model we imitate, though very imperfectly. 0, then, 
covetous, selfish professors of Christ's Gospel, imbibe Lis 
spirit, and live and labor and expend for the recovery of the 
lost. Brethren, I must rise now from the attitude of defence, 
and turn and charge on this practical indifference, and on this 
sceptical philosophy, positive guilt. Had the Bible contained 
its present amount of wisdom, but on some of men's temporal 
interests : had it determined the great questions of finance ; 
how eagerly would they read it, how cordially believe it ! 
Now, as a spiritual book, the one class disregard it, and the 
other look at it as full of exaggerations. Yet they should 
remember that this is the only volume in human language 
which God has condescended to write. And should it not 
contain deep, high, wondrous things ? Is not this one of its 
very marks and seals ? The Bible is full of paradoxes ; be- 
cause it shows us only fragments of truths, the full magni- 
tude and harmony of which we cannot now comprehend. 
God knows two things which we do not know, and therefore 
does two things which we would not do. He knows the 
demerit of sin, and therefore threatens it with everlasting 
punishment. He knows the value of the soul, and therefore 
gives his Son for its redemption. Ye that despise this rich 
gift ; ye that despise us for our efforts to proclaim its story 
to the world ; let me say to you in God's name, Ye have a 



113 



double guilt, and must meet a two-fold condemnation. You 
believe not, and therefore are condemned already. You also 
rob the world of its hope. Your theories and your practice 
would leave mankind in a hopeless condition. You dash 
from the trembling hand of perishing man the lamp of life, 
the cup of salvation ; you shatter in pieces the only bark 
to which poor human nature can commit its hopes for eter- 
nity ! What have you proved, fellow-man ? At best a nega- 
tive. You have begun and ended with denying. You would 
prevent our going to probe man's moral wound, and admin- 
ister God's efficacious remedy. If one finds himself the slave 
of passion, if his conscience condemns him, if he fears that 
there possibly may be an hour of retribution and an eternity 
of wretchedness just beyond the confines of life, what can 
you say to this troubled spirit ? You can sneer ; but can you 
console ? You can reason ; but can you suppress the instinct- 
ive solicitude for a sure and solid hope of immortal blessed- 
ness ? To amuse man with theories, but to leave darkness 
on this chief point of all his solicitude, is the glory of anti- 
scriptural philosophy. Just where man most wants light, 
it is darkness. And just there the Bible pours the effulgence 
of eternal day. And not to hail that light, not to spread it, 
is treason to God's mercy, treason to our sacred trust, treason 
to man's highest interests. 

But let me turn a moment, in closing, to you, my dear 
brother, on this momentous hour of your life, when you are 
come to receive from Jesus, by the hands of his unworthy 
10* 



114 SERMONS. 

servants, the investment of this highest office confided to 
man. Let me say to you : 

That deep compassion for men should characterize the 
whole spirit of the missionary, and of missionary work. 

Go to the benighted, with as glad a heart as animated the 
angels when they were commissioned to announce the glad 
tidings of Heaven's great mission of love. When your feet 
shall touch the shores of that distant land, sing, in the ful- 
ness of your spirit, Glory to God in the highest, peace on 
earth, and good-will to man. Be touched, like your High 
Priest, with a feeling of their infirmities. Dwell in your 
thoughts on their lost estate ; see them as the great Shep- 
herd did, wandering from the fold : until your heart bleeds 
and breaks with pity. This will animate and sustain you 
amid difficulties. You can bear them for the sake of the 
miserable ; for yours will then be pity tender and sustain- 
ing, like that of the patient mother by the couch of her suf- 
fering child. This will make you gentle and forbearing and 
patient, even with a mother's tenderness, and keep you from 
crushing the bruised reed, or quenching the faintly-kindled 
Vy-ick. This will speak in heavenly eloquence from your very 
countenance, and melt the gates of brass in the hard heart 
of man. This will give you errands to the mercy-seat, and 
arguments before it. This will nerve you to your work, 
when a relaxing climate would tend to unnerve you. This 
will be treading in the footsteps of the Great Missionary. 

Let me say again — That the example of Christ is the 
missionary's encouragement. You leave all for those you 



115 



would save ; so did he. You mean to identify yourself with 
them in everything but sin, — to bear their infirmities, and 
share their sorrows ; so did he. You are acting on the great 
principle that, to save from overflowing evil, the good of the 
universe must be diffused, not concentrated ; so did he. You 
are going to men, and not waiting for them to come to you ; 
so did he. You are going to seek and to save that which is 
lost, according to the measure imparted to you of the Father ; 
so did he. And you are not only laboring like Christ, but also 
for him and with him. He is seeking these very souls. He 
once did it in person. Now he does it by his Spirit, and by his 
people. But his interest is no less now than when his sacred 
feet were traversing the land which your feet shall traverse, 
to save the perishing sheep of Israel's fold. You are going 
like him to pray in Getlisemane ; but he spares your ascent 
to Golgotha and the tree. Go, dear brother, moisten with 
your tears for man the soil which he moistened when he 
thought of the lost. Go, assured not only that you are seek- 
ing them for Christ, but that he is seeking them by you and 
with you. Urge that much, and with much faith in your 
prayers ; it will prevail for many a blessing. 

Let us conclude by saying — That persuasion to believe 
in Christ is the missionary's great work. To effect this, 
he must commend himself to the conscience. Through an 
awakened conscience, man learns his need of Christ. Go, 
then, dear brother, speak to the sleeping conscience of man. 
Let not your attention be fixed upon his peculiarities, his 
specific qualities as an individual man, or his more general 



116 SERMONS. 

features of national character, his theories of philosophy and 
religion ; but meet him as a man, as a lost man : nay. as one 
that knows he is lost. If your attention is drawn only or 
chiefly to his corporeal miseries, his social degradation, his 
intellectual privations, you will incur the danger of diverting 
his and your attention from that which should arouse your 
profounder sympathies, and all his slumbering energies of 
conscience. You must, indeed, attempt the amelioration of 
his intellectual and social state ; but guard vigilantly against 
letting either your or his anxieties and efforts terminate 
there. When you have to meet him as the philosopher of 
another school, you may be discouraged at the sincerity 
and obstinacy, nay, perhaps, plausibility, with which he can 
confront you. But, when you meet him in the winning 
strength of a deep sympathy, — you, the lost and recovered, 
him, the lost and perishing man, — then you are in your 
strongest attitude, he is in his most defenceless. The mis- 
sionary must speak from deep experience to the conscious- 
ness of guilt often stifled, never annihilated, in the impenitent 
bosom; to a conscience often stifled, often cheated, never 
tranquillized, by his vain superstitions. Speak, my brother ; 
now in thunder, now in the still small voice. So God 
speaks in nature and in grace. Man will understand you, 
when you whisper to his conscience. Yet you may awaken 
resistance. The light is painful to them that love darkness. 
And false philosophy, and false religion, and practical unbelief, 
will all be resorted to, to shield the conscience. And yet 
your great work is to bring home on the soul of each man 



JESUS, THE GREAT MISSIONARY. 117 



the conviction that he is lost. Trouble yourself little, and 
others still less, with theories of human depravity. What- 
ever else they do, they do not awaken the conscience ; and, 
if I mistake not, more of them have lulled than have awak- 
ened it. The facts of depravity and conscience are two of 
the ultimate facts, to be taken as theological axioms. God 
has not proved the existence of either, but simply asserted 
it. And so may we ; both on his testimony, and on men's 
very consciousness. Perhaps one of the mightiest elements 
of ministerial power is the deep conviction on the soul of 
the lost condition of man. It must give fervor and frequency 
to prayer, and tend greatly to produce conviction in others. 
Your hearer may be proud and powerful in his philosophy, 
he may be self-complacent in his creed and ceremonies. But 
whisper to his soul of seasons of shame, and self-reproach, 
and fear, which forebode impending doom, and he cannot 
deny, he cannot argue ; for he feels that he is dealing with 
truth and with God. In your public addresses deal with 
the conscience, and you will imitate the greatest preachers. 
Study the sermons of Elijah to Ahab, cf Nathan to David, 
of Peter to the thousands at Jerusalem, of Paul to Felix. 
There you find no flattery of human nature, no general 
descriptions of virtue : but guilt and condemnation described 
as pertaining to them all. Feel that man is lost ; that guilt 
and condemnation and spiritual poverty belong to every child 
of Adam. Proclaim that on the house-top and in the closet. 
Man may not have thought of it ; but, when you suggest it 
he sees that it is truth. Give him exalted views of human 



118 SERMONS. 

dignity and worth, not as it is, but as it was and may be. 
Solve the strange perplexity of every man's experience ; tell 
him what you know of former conflicts and present con- 
quests ; of noble aspirations after heaven, and sordid attach- 
ments to earth ; of desires to please God, and determinations 
to please self Speak to his love of happiness; he w^ill under- 
stand you. And, as you solve the mystery to his astonished 
soul, as you describe the symptoms of his spiritual malady, 
as you point him to the balm of Gilead, and the great Phy- 
sician, a new life of hope may begin to infuse itself into his 
soul. Again, I say, your great employment is to bring the 
individual souls of men to Christ. Be not diverted from 
this ; be not satisfied short of success in this. If you must 
do other things, consider them collateral and subordinate to 
this. Your glorious commission is, to seek and save the lost. 
Be filled, be fired with the spirit of that commission. May 
you, and may the church, and all of us who anilounce the 
Gospel, be more and more filled with that glorious object — 
the recovering to immortal spirits the lost image of God, and 
guiding the perishing to an almighty Saviour. May the 
Spirit be poured from on high, until the whole church sees 
and feels that these facts are now of chief importance — man 
is lost, and the Son of God is seeking him ; man is lost, and 
the Son of God is come to save him ; man is lost, and the 
church is commissioned to go forth in the might of faith and 
prayer to his salvation. To save the lost ! To-night we 
talk of it, as children talk of the afiairs of empires ; we see 
through a glass darkly ; our conceptions are low and limited. 



119 



To save the lost ! Tell us, ye damned spirits, what it 
means ! Tell us, Son of God, what it means ; what stirred 
thy soul in godlike compassion to seek the lost ! Tell us, ye 
ransomed and ye faithful spirits who never sinned — tell us, 
eternity — what is this mighty work of Gospel-missions ! 
Tell us, Father, tell thy churches, tell thy ministers : 
until every slumberer awake, every energy be aroused, and 
the way of life be pointed out to a perishing race ! 



VII. 

OUK SANCTIFICATION. 



"^f)is IS t\)e toill of (Sia'is, eben gour sanrtif ira t in n." — 1 Thess. 4 : 3. 

Here is a peculiar feature of the Scriptures ; they contain 
the vastest truths shut up in brief, simple sentences. In 
this one word, sanctification, is embraced a fact which trans- 
cends all our conceptions ; which concerns us more intimately 
than our health, our honors, our position, our possessions, 
our attainments in knowledge, and all upon which the heart 
of the world is most earnestly set. It concerns us little 
where we are, what we possess, what others think us to be : 
but what we are is a matter of infinite moment. It includes 
more than the restoration of the primitive image of God in 
our spirits ; it is a confirmation in perfect holiness forever. 

And it is here affirmed that God is not indifierent to us ; 
and that what he prefers to all things for us is, that we 
become perfectly holy. 

To get this momentous truth before our minds, we may 
meditate on the intrinsic evidence of it, and on the positive 
manifestation God has made of this feeling. We contemplate 



OUR SANCTIFICATION. 121 

I. The intrinsic evidence op the fact that God 
DESIRES OUR sanctification. — This is a form of evidence 
which springs directly from contemplating the nature of 
sanctification, as regarded by a being of perfect holiness and 
kindness. 

1. Sanctification is the restoration of that which was 
ruined by the apostasy. — God is not the God of confusion, 
but of order. He made man upright, and in his own image. 
Nothing has grieved and offended him like the apostasy of 
angels and men. His work was marred ; his purposes of 
goodness were defeated. If it were, then, only to bring back 
things to the primitive order, when he pronounced them very 
good, it is in his view most desirable that man should be 
made holy. "We might never have dared to believe this, did 
not God affirm it. But now that he does, the reasonableness 
and naturalness of it appears very clear. We do not wish 
to see a bird with a broken wing, a ship dismasted, a man 
dumb or blind, or a machine out of order. And it delights 
us when we see them restored to their natural state. So 
God delights in a restoration to the primitive moral order. 

2. Sanctification is the complete reconciliation of man 
to God. — He does not fear our enmity, but it is not agreea- 
able to him. As a lover of order, he must be pleased to see 
man reconciled to that pure and perfect order he has estab- 
lished. Sin is a quarrel with God's arrangements. Crea- 
tion, providence, law, yea, God himself, are all contrary to 
our taste and wishes, just so far as we are sinners. But 
sanctification is a return to a perfect harmony with God and 

11 



122 SERMONS. 

his government, his providence and his works. And it must 
delight him who is himself in perfect harmony with every- 
thing but sin, to see man returning to a sound judgment, a 
correct taste, a pure affection, a resigned spirit under painful 
dealings of Providence, a cordial submission to rightful au- 
thority and perfect law, a genial fellowship with all good 
beings, and a joyful laboriousness in every good work. God 
delights in our sanctification, too, because 

3. It is the restoration of perfect loveliness to man. — 
He has no pleasure in sin. It is to him what defilement, 
deformity, disorder, confusion, is to the most perfect human 
senses. It is supremely offensive ; and he would prefer, in 
every case, to see holiness in its stead. Holiness is lovely 
in God's eyes. It is moral beauty, and is everywhere the 
most delightful object he can contemplate. If you propose 
the inquiry concerning any rational being in heaven, earth, 
or hell, would God prefer its perfect holiness, this moment, 
to its being in any other state, there can be but one reply : 
this is the will of God, even their sanctification. He loves 
the sight of a soul sensible of its sinful state ; still more, of 
one fleeing from his sins to his Saviour ; and still more, of 
one restored to perfect holiness, which is perfect personal 
excellence and loveliness. 

And this satisfaction must reach a high degree when all 
the sanctified shall come together, and form one perfect 
family, nation, or kingdom. 

This natural view of the case prepares us now to sur- 
vey 



OUR SANCTIFICATION. 123 

II. The actions of God in reference to man's sanc- 
TIFICATION, that we may see some practical evidence of his 
desire to secure it. — And when we come to his acts, we see 
more than mere desire ; we see great earnestness. 

That earnestness has manifested itself in every conceivable 
form. It has approached man on every side, assailed him at 
every accessible point, pursued and pressed him with every 
variety of motive. It comes to us in the form of 

Authority. — We are made for law and authority. A 
part of our nature which has survived the general wreck is 
our susceptibility to feel the requirements of a rightly con- 
stituted authority. See, then, the Eternal God clothing him- 
self in the robes of divine majesty, and coming down to the 
rugged throne of Horeb, to make a law requiring man to be 
holy ; and throwing around that law all the sanctions of divine 
approbation and displeasure, eternal bliss and eternal woe. 
There is earnestness. God is moved at the sight of our sinful- 
ness, and in the prospect of our sanctification deeply moved ; 
and he intends that we shall be. Therefore he addresses the 
conscience, the most commanding faculty in our souls, when 
it acts at all. And the sum of his law is. Thou shalt be right 
and do right ; thou shalt love God and man ; in other words, 
thou shalt be holy. And to this requirement are appended 
the two infinite sanctions, or motives; eternal reward and 
eternal punishment. What is intended by all this ? Surely, 
that God would by it move us to become holy. And that in 
the magnitude of that authority which commands, and the 
immensity of those consequences which he attaches to obe- 



124 SERMONS. 

dience and disobedience, he is expressing the earnestness of 
his desire that we should be holy. To this mighty influence 
he adds the potent discipline of his Providence. Life is full 
of meaning, of a divine meaning ; and blessed is he who can 
interpret it. Providence is a mode of God's action. And as 
all his acts tend to a definite and glorious result, that result 
must be nothing transient or trivial. God and man may be 
seeking totally different ends from the same action ; and man 
is free to defeat some of God's highest ends, so far as his 
own welfare is concerned. Let us, then, take the afflictive 
dispensations of Providence. They smite us, they wither 
our hearts, they blast our gourd, they break our anchor- 
chain, they cast us into a fiery furnace. What then ? These 
light afflictions work out for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory. The father is chastening his son. 
The vine-dresser is pruning off the too luxuriant shoots ; the 
refiner is preparing the silver to reflect his own image. This 
is the will of God, even your sanctification. 

We see the mighty forces of nature suspended, — the sea 
rolled back upon itself, the sun arrested in his course, the 
dead raised to life, — to call forth from the heart of man that 
faith and love which are the starting-point of holiness. Nay, 
we see the Son of God forsaking the throne of his glory, and 
descending to tabernacle among us in sorrow, toil, and shame, 
that he may show man how to be holy, and may win him to 
it. We see him in agony, bleeding away his life, to this 
same end. Then he ascends the throne of heaven, and 
wields the powers of the universe, and sends forth his Holy 



OI/R SANCTIFICATION. 125 

Spirit to make the heart of man holy. Thus God manifests 
the earnestness of his will for our sanctification. 

With our minds full of this fact, let us now see what 
important practical consequences flow from it. Since there 
is nothing about our personal conditions, interests, or desti- 
nies, which God so much desires as our sanctification, then 

We should rejoice in our afflictions. — This was Paul's 
view. These light, momentary afflictions work out for us an 
eternal weight of glory. They do not necessarily benefit us, 
but that is their tendency and design. They humble, chasten, 
elevate, and purify, those who recognize God's goodness and 
wisdom in them. '' Tribulation worketh patience; patience, 
experience; and experience, hope." God, in chastising us, 
is aiming at our perfection, and our eternal peace. How 
improper it then is for us to murmur, and fret, and yield 
ourselves up to sorrow alone ! Christ needed, not a personal 
but an ofiicial sanctification; and he cheerfully submitted 
himself to the fiery trial, that he might "be perfect through 
sufiering." We need not love pain or loss for their own 
sakes ; but we may learn to rejoice in them when they loosen 
our cable, and set us free to return to our native, heavenly 
home. We may well rejoice in the furnace that is consuming 
our dross. Another consequence of this fact is. 

We should be earnest in the use of religious ordinances. 
— We see that the end God seeks for us is the highest we 
(jan pursue for ourselves. The change to be produced is 
mire important than any other we can experience, and it is 
one upon which we see that God sets so high a value. But 
11^ 



126 SERMONS. 

this change is effected through the ordinances of religion, as 
the appointed means. " Sanctify them through thy truth." 
Therefore we should relax our energies at no stage of the 
process. Some of us may be at the very commencement of 
this momentous work ; for it has a beginning. Whatever the 
form or manner of conversion, its essence is the same in 
every human being. It is a turning of the heart from wrong 
objects of desire and pursuit to right, — from wrong depend- 
ence to right. The man who has an unsanctified heart seeks 
temporal good for himself, and for those he loves. He is 
godless, seljBsh, worldly. He thinks of the world, pursues 
the world, enjoys the world. To begin to be holy is to cease 
from all this ; and to begin to hate this selfishness, and god- 
lessness, and worldliness. The thoughts begin to take a 
new range, — the heart, to seek new objects of pursuit, and 
dwell on new objects of affection ; the process of purifica- 
tion is begun ; the dross of selfishness and ungodliness is 
loosening from the soul, to leave it a purified, holy vessel in 
God's eternal sanctuary. And with this change in the 
desires comes a change in the confidence of the heart. It 
ceases to trust the world or self Christ has now taken that 
place. He is trusted for all the soul wants, which now dis- 
covers its utter bankruptcy. Trust is the deepest homage 
of the heart, and man cannot be holy until his heart renders 
this homage to our God and Saviour. 

Of course so radical a change in the heart must greatly 
affect the outward life. All immorality ceases. Benevo- 
lence, honor, fidelity, marks the intercourse with man, if 



OUR SANCTIFICATION. 127 

they were wanting before ; and if they were not wanting, 
they now manifest themselves as based on profounder princi- 
ples, and connected with a humility before unknown. And 
to these is conjoined a devotional attendance on the various 
rites of divine worship. 

Then this change has 

A progress. — And that is the will of God, that we be 
more perfectly transformed. With Paul we are to forget the 
things that are behind, and reach forward to those which are 
before. Inward principles are to be strengthened. Wrong 
habits are to be subdued. A divine life is to be gradually 
superseding an earthly ; and a benevolent, a selfish life. This 
is the will of God. The intercourse with God is to be more 
complete and frequent. The higher motives are to take place 
of the lower, in all actions. Men are to feel, in their inter- 
course with us, that we are becoming more like Christ. 

Then it is to have 

A consummation. — And this is the will of God, that we 
become perfect in holiness. That is the end, — the great 
end, to which all the preceding steps were only means. This 
will be the second creation, upon which our benevolent Cre- 
ator will look, and pronounce it very good. Therefore, to the 
last, we should wait on God in his appointed way, with even 
increased earnestness. Moreover, 

We should be co7ifide7it of success in the right employ- 
ment of religious ordinances. — There is no ground for the 
same confidence in the pursuit of any other end, for no other 
is so precious in God's sight. All who are struggling 



128 SERMONS. 

toward this glorious attainment have the strongest reasons to 
be encouraged. You are not alone in this work. The very 
commencement of it separated you from an irreligious world. 
They wonder, now, that they miss you here and there, — 
that you no longer furnish them the same entertainment as 
formerly. You lose their sympathy and countenance. You 
find too few of the members of the church ready to sympa- 
thize with your new feelings ; and thus you may come to a 
discouraging feeling of solitariness and helplessness. If you 
knew it, this vacant place is made around you that it may be 
filled with a new presence. You are cast off from man, that 
you may be thrown upon God. Human hearts repel, that 
you may turn to that heart full of a divine sympathy. Who- 
ever may be indifferent to your new feelings, desires, and 
purposes. One is not; and, if you could but apprehend it, 
that One is all ; all else are vanity, nonentity, in the com- 
parison. The mighty God of Jacob wills your sanctification. 
You are struggling for faith, humility, charity. He has 
fixed his heart upon your attaining them all, and in perfec- 
tion. He wills with you, has willed before you ; has never 
changed his will, nor diminished the intensity of his desire. 
All his perfections, all his purposes and plans, are with you. 
Set any other end before you, and you have not God with 
you. He may permit you to succeed in that pursuit ; he may, 
in righteous anger, prosper you. But, in pursuing this end, 
you have God fully with you. Can man ask for more encour- 
agement? You go to pray, discouraged and fearful. You 
wish to pray aright. You desire to make some attainment 



OUR SANCTIFICATION. 129 

in holiness. Well, you go not alone ; for this is the will 
of God, even your sanctification. This truth also 

Furnishes the highest obligation and the fullest 
encouragement to labor for each other s sanctification. — 
It is the will of God that every intelligent creature he 
has formed, be holy. Has any one a right to regard this 
desire of his Creator with indifference ? As we are bound to 
pray continually, " Thy will be done on earth as in heaven," 
so are we bound to desire that every human being may please 
God, by being holy. Indifference to the. spiritual interests 
of our fellow-men, satisfaction wdth their remaining in a state 
of unholy alienation from God, is itself a sin. But if we 
are bound to desire the sanctification of other men, we are 
also bound to do what in us lies to secure that end. There- 
fore, they who despise Christian missions are very wicked in 
God's sight. They who have no interest in them manifest 
an indifference to God's will, which betrays a heart at enmity 
with him. 

The obligation to do what we can to secure the sanctifica- 
tion of all men is founded on this desire of God, and on our 
obligation to secure those results which are pleasing to him. 

And no other labor has such encouragement. The very 
effort we make is pleasing to our heavenly Father, whether 
successful or unsuccessful. But in no work have we more 
reason to expect ultimate success and such desirable results ; 
for there is no other which is so entirely accordant with the 
will of God. 

Here is the responsibility and encouragement of those who 



130 SERMONS. 

are members of the same church. We have engaged to seek 
each other's sanctification. What motives to faithfulness can 
be stronger than these ? In doing this, they are discharging 
their highest obligations, pleasing their heavenly Father, and 
enjoying his cooperation. If God desires the sanctification 
of all men, then 

The condition of the irreligious is fearful. — God 
vfishes us to be holy. And his desire lays upon each of us the 
obligation to gratify him. We have no right to be grieving 
him, and opposing Jiis wishes, day by day, and year after year. 
And there is no validity in the excuse so often presented to 
lull the conscience : "If God caii help me to become holy^ 
he is so indifferent about it that he never will." That is 
not true. He is not indifferent ; and, from the holiness and 
benevolence of his nature, never can be. Many persons, 
indeed, imagine that they are desirous of being saved, but 
that their feelings on this point find no sympathy in God. 
Now, so far from this, God desires them to be saved ; and 
his feelings find no sympathy in theirs. They may wish to 
send on and secure a good apartment in the hotel beyond 
the sea of death, as travellers often do in going from city 
to city. But if salvation consists in becoming sanctified, 
that does not enter into their wishes, much less their plans. 
Let every one, then, press his own conscience with the weight 
of this consideration : God desires me to be holy, and to be 
perfect in his likeness. And to this let it be added that he 
requires us to be holy. " Be ye holy, for I am holy, saith 
the Lord." That command makes our obligation complete. 



OUR SANCTIFICATION. 131 

And it is universally binding. No human being is exempt 
in any condition, or at any time. And whoever is not turn- 
ing from sin to holiness, is living in the incessant breach of 
the highest obligations. Conscience may be blinded and 
silenced by ingenious excuses, and quieted by the approbation 
of others ; but that does not annihilate or diminish the obli- 
gation to turn from sin to holines^. . 

And every one who feels this obligation the most deeply, has 
the deepest sense of his own failure to be what God requires. 
We have but begun to obey this command ; and the more 
earnestly we endeavor to obey it, the more profoundly do we 
discover the evil and the power of sin. Hence the best men 
make the most self-abasing acknowledgments of sin to God, 
the more fully they are escaping from its thraldom. What 
remains, is to them infinitely more dreadful than the whole 
undiminished power and being of sin in the impenitent ; as 
the weary traveller approaching his home finds the last 
obstructing mountains more tedious and painful than many 
much more rugged and difficult, which met him in the begin- 
ning of his way. 

Some, however, relieve themselves from the pressure of 
obligation by a formal admission of their inability. They 
can do many things, and are willing to do them, which would 
express some earnestness in regard to securing eternal hap- 
piness. But, to begin the work of personal sanctification, to 
change their own hearts, and to cultivate the love of God, 
seems to them a hopeless undertaking. They turn from the 
subject after coming to this conclusion, relieved from all 



132 SERMOXS. 

sense of obligation, satisfied with themselves, if not with their 
prospects. Here is a sad delusion. The discovery of our own 
weakness, so far from being a step backward, is the first 
onward step in the kingdom of heaven. When the desire of 
holiness and eternal life is once awakened in the human soul, 
the next step toward life is faith. But pride or self-reliance 
is the great antagonist to^ faith. When will men understand 
this, and learn that every attainment in the divine life is a 
manifestation of superhuman strength put forth in him who is 
conscious of his own weakness. Whoever you may be, fellow- 
mortal, you are bound to be all that you can conceive of in being 
pious, religious, converted, a Christian, godly or sanctified. 
Your excuses are pretences, not reasons. There is an impos- 
sibility, in one view of the case. And you may contemplate 
that until your pride is thoroughly destroyed. But there is 
equally a possibility. God will help you to become holy. 
If you will come to Christ, his strength will be made perfect 
in your weakness. If you will with cordial sympathy enter 
into the feelings which induced him to visit our world, to 
live his lowly and sorrowful life, to die on the accursed tree ; 
if you will cordially die to sin with him, be crucified to the 
world, descend with him to his sepulchre, and there bury 
your old nature, then shall you burst the gates of death with 
him, and rise to a new life. The single question, then, is, 
will you ? It matters not what practical difficulty lies in 
your way. This embarrassment is but a work of the devil ; 
and the Son of God " was manifested that he might destroy 
the works of the devil." Frequently you have said, "Well, 



OUR SANCTIFICATION. 133 

after all, this religion is such an intangible, mystical, remote 
affair, that I can do nothing with it practically. If there is 
a supernatural influence that comes down upon some per- 
sons, by which they see it differently, and find what the first 
step is, I must wait for that. But, as it is, I can do noth- 
ing ; and I see not that I am bound to make any change, or 
take any step in this matter." And yet, when you have 
reached that conclusion, and stated that argument so satis- 
factorily to yourself, a voice reaches you from the throne 
above, "Be ye holy, fori am holy; thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart." Your premises were 
correct, that you are weak as infancy in this great work. 
But your inference is unsound, that, therefore, you are not 
bound to be sanctified. You are bound, because this is the 
will of God, even your sanctification. Your refusal to 
begin is unreasonable, because you have all the sympathy 
of an omnipotent Saviour with you, the instant you com- 
mence in earnest. And the more you distrust yourself, and 
trust him, the more rapid will be your progress. 

Now, to neglect this duty, and disregard all these obliga- 
tions, is fearful. It is offering desperate resistance to God ; 
fostering an utter delusion about your own true interests ; 
wasting all your zeal and energy upon objects which possess 
no intrinsic value, while neglecting those of infinite moment. 
The truth, then, before us brings us to this urgent conclu- 
sion: 

Every person who knows that the will of God is his 
sanctification^ is bound to turn at once to the Lord 
12 



134 SERMONS. 

Jesus Christy to seek and trust him with the whole heart, 
— God made you to be holy. He has always supremely 
desired this concerning you. Up to this moment you have 
disregarded that will, broken through the restraints he had 
thrown around you. And now, with unchanged desire, 
his eye is fixed on you, and his parental sovereign voice is 
addressing you: ''Be ye holy, for I am holy." Here, 
fellow-man, here is your duty — your solemn, urgent, imme- 
diate duty. Abandon your excuses and vain reasonings. 
They change no fact ; they do no good. They only deceive 
your conscience, harden your heart, and offend your God. 

I once pressed this subject on the attention of a young 
friend. He admitted everything, felt everything ; only did 
not allow the conviction to penetrate and possess his soul, 
" I must take the first step now." It seemed to him as it 
seems now to you. It cannot be at this living moment. 
And yet, in a few months from that day, he sent for me in 
haste from the bed of death. Then he felt that it is a work 
of infinite importance, and of immediate obligation. But 
why more now that he lay on that bed, pressed with a thou- 
sand embarrassments, than if he sat where you sit on that 
bench? 0, the deceived heart of man ! 0, the subtlety and 
ascendency of our dread enemy ! 

Who is going from this house of God to-day, regardless of 
his Maker's will ? Who can afford to perish under such cir- 
cumstances ? God wills your sanctification, and you are not 
willing it ! 



VIII. 

EFFECTUAL PRAYER. 



"STfjc cff^ftual fer6«nt pragcr of a rigf)teous man a&aiUti^ mut^." 
— James 6 : 16. 

Two facts are here affirmed : that prayer is efficacious ; 
that the efficacy of prayer is proportioned to its holy energy. 
The words "effectual, fervent," represent one Greek word, 
which might be rendered — energized, inwrought. Prayer 
is not words nor attitudes ; nor merely a desire feebly felt, 
and coldly uttered, to a being scarcely recognized. The 
spirit of prayer is the result of energy ; and is itself the 
highest form of human energy. It is the mighty result of 
the power of the Holy Spirit, who "searcheth the deep 
things of God; " aiding our infirmities, and making "inter- 
cession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." The 
prince of apostles, accounting for his own Christian efficiency, 
says, that God wrought mightily in him. It is likewise 
inwrought by our own efforts, and the assiduous cultivation 
of religious principles and sentiments in our hearts. 

We first maintain, then, 

I. That prayer may prevail with God. — This fact is 



136 SERMONS. 

more doubted than denied. Many who affirm it would find, 
©n a close scrutiny, that they in reality disbelieve it. For 
our belief is controlled, and our feelings are determined, by 
many propositions which we have never framed into language, 
and much less accepted on sufficient evidence. One of these 
propositions is, that prayer has no tendency to influence God; 
or, in another form, " I shall receive no benefit in answer to 
prayer." We believe that proposition every day we live 
without prayer ; every time we rise discouraged from pros- 
tration in prayer. It becomes us, then, to look closely into 
the sources of evidence on this very important question: May 
prayer prevail with God ? or, is it unreasonable to expect to 
receive what we ask from God ? And I now affirm, in view 
of all objections, that there are no valid reasons for doubt- 
ing that prayer may bring us blessings from God, directly 
and indirectly, which we should not procure without it. 

Let us, then, notice, that all our objections to a full belief 
in the efficacy of prayer arise from a greater confidence in 
our own unaided reasonings, and certain intuitive convictions, 
than in the testimony of God ; a vain confidence, by which 
we make it impossible that God should teach us anything 
we cannot know without his instruction. 

In this connection, therefore, I would remind you of one 
or two facts, which tend to modify an extravagant confidence 
in our reason. 

One is this: The Author of nature has not consulted 
human wisdom in the arrangement of even material causes. 
We know that fire consumes wood. But how do we come to 



EFFECTUAL PRAYER. 137 

know it? Bj reasoning beforehand how it ought to be? 
No ; there is not a single law of matter or mind that man 
has found out bj anticipation. He has, indeed, conjectured, 
after seeing the operation of a cause in one set of circum- 
stances, that it might operate equally in another ; but, then, 
he has depended on previous observation for this conjecture, 
and on subsequent observation to confirm the conjecture. 
And human reason, therefore, is no more competent to deny 
that prayer may move God, and so move all second causes, 
than it was competent to deny that the same force which 
makes an apple fall to the ground binds the planetary sys- 
tem together. God has not waited for human wisdom in 
arranging causes and effects ; and he may, therefore, have 
given prayer a place which that wisdom would not have 
assigned it. But again : 

The Author of nature has contradicted the wisdom of man 
in the constitution of the universe. I mean by the wisdom 
of man. his mere logic, independent of his observation, and 
those impressions or perceptions to which men yield such 
firm credence, even in opposition to the Scriptures. For 
more than five thousand years from the creation of the 
world the wisest men were continually making the most 
egregious blunders in describing the processes of nature. 
Every ancient cosmogony, but that of Moses, is now seen to 
be a mass of folly. The reason of man was continually 
declaring how things ought to be and must be. But, when 
Lord Bacon at length arose to disenthrall the human mind, 
he showed that, except in the department of abstract truth, 
12* 



138 SERMONS. 

as mathematics and metaphysics, they must look outward; 
that evidence, not intuition, must guide them. Conjectures 
concerning the Creator's plans and modes of action were use- 
less ; and, if confided in, injurious. We now see that human 
reason, without any testimony from God to guide it, was 
perfectly unable to tell how he ought to make a universe, 
or how he had made it. If, then, men have reasoned so 
short of the truth, and so against it, in regard to material 
causes, why should we trust our reason against the testimony 
of God in the higher departments of truth ? 

These general considerations we adduce before making a 
more particular examination of the objections which human 
reason presents to the efficacy of prayer. It is perfectly 
manifest that there is no solid, rational ground for denying 
or doubting the efficacy of prayer, because the whole subject 
lies beyond the sphere of intuitive or abstract reasoning. 
Yet there are objections which these general views are not 
sufficient to remove. 

One may be thus stated: "We are conscious of an 
immeasurable disparity between the Infinite mind and our 
limited understandings. We cannot teach him anything. 
When we tell him our wants and feelings, he knows before- 
hand all that we can say, and more than we can say ; so that 
our expressions at last come short of his knowledge. Is it 
not, then, a loss of time, and a vain ceremony, to make such 
addresses to the Deity ? Even we, ourselves, find it very 
irksome to hear from a person a long recital of his troubles, 
and especially when we happen to know the whole story 



EFFECTUAL PRAYER. 139 

before he begins to recount it." This is the strongest form 
I can give the objection. 

Now, there are at least three distinct grounds upon which 
its entire futility can be shown : the very nature of com- 
munion ; the relations and feelings of a teacher ; and those of 
a parent. If there be a possibility of such a thing as com- 
munion between God and his creatures, then that communion 
must be the interchange of thoughts and feelings. To be 
intellectual, social, and spiritual, it must be that, and nothing 
else than that. It might, indeed, be more interesting to 
Jehovah to commune with the archangels, their range of 
thought being so much loftier, and their emotions being so 
much nobler than ours. Yet, if we are to commune with 
God, it must be by imparting our thoughts to him, and ex- 
pressing our emotions, such as they are. So that, unless it 
can be shown that the Creator is forever to be cut off from 
all intellectual and social communion with all his creatui^es 
(for the objection as really lies against his communion with 
angels and archangels), then our intellectual disparity is not 
a good and sufficient reason why we should not pray. More- 
over, we can learn from the feelings of a teacher who takes 
a deep interest in the communication of his pupil, how God 
can be pleased to hear our prayers. It is not so much that 
the pupil imparts any information, or that his notions are all 
correct ; but it is because he is making progress, and because 
this is the way in which he is to be developed. Our heavenly 
Father may see that by no exercise we perform do we make 
such progress in all spiritual attainments as by fervent, ener- 



140 SERMONS. 

gized prayer. And then, again, the parental feelings ex- 
plain much. In the nursery, words are not weighed with 
the balance of the schools. The first distinct utterance 
of the endearing epithet father, from an infant's lips, has 
more eloquence to his ear than the most learned and skilful 
orator ever utters. Nay, the prattling of the little creature 
finds its way to the deepest recesses of sensibility in the soul. 
We must remember, then, that our prayer commences thus : 
''Our Father." Call it prattling, if you please; but a 
father's ear is to receive it, and a father's heart to appraise 
it. Say that the recital of our troubles is tedious to Gabriel, 
if you please; but remember it is not Grabriel, but our 
heavenly Father, who is to hear it. 

A kindred difficulty to this is, that " there is such majesty 
and grandeur in the King of heaven that we are too 
mean to approach him." It may suffice now to say, in ref- 
erence to this embarrassment, that it can be turned into an 
encouragement by applying to it one passage of the Word : 
*' If I be a Father, where is my honor ; and if I be a Master, 
where is my fear?" The legitimate consequence of his 
majesty and authority and glory is to exact homage, adora- 
tion, and praise. This spiritual tribute of thanksgiving and 
praise, this humble confession of sin, and recognition of de- 
pendence, is precisely the kind of revenue which we can 
furnish to the king's treasury; and, therefore, just the kind 
that he expects of us. There is one blessed line of Scripture 
worth infinitely more than all the deductions of an earth-born 



EFFECTUAL PRAYER. 141 

wisdom : the High and Mighty One declares, '''Whoso offer- 
eth praise, glorifieth me." 

Another doubt arises from the divine goodness, about 
which we sometimes reason thus: ''If God is infinitely 
kind, and disposed to promote our welfare, then he will not 
withhold any blessing, simply because we do not ask for it, 
or ask with sufficient fervor ; nor would he more bestow it 
for our asking." Now, upon all this logic we ask two ques- 
tions : Is it so in fact ? and ought it to be so of right ? 

As to the matter of fact, we may make our experiment 
in any department of life. Man needs, for example, an 
abundant supply of the fruits of the earth. Let him, then, 
apply this short-hand inference from God's goodness to this 
case. God is kind, and disposed to bestow every good thing 
on all his creatures; therefore he will not withhold any 
needful quantity of Indian corn and wheat and vegetables, 
simply because we do not perform this or that agricultural 
operation, nor is it reasonable to think he will the more 
bestow it for our labors. Does omnipotent Goodness require 
the aid of ploughs and harrows to feed his children ? Here 
we see the reasons to be entirely contradictory to facts ; for 
we know that it holds true in regard to every department of 
life, " the hand of the diligent maketh rich, but the sluggard 
Cometh to want." And there can be no reason, derived from 
the kindness of God, to show that it is not as true of praying 
as of ploughing. And as we can see how the welfare of man 
and of society is promoted by the arrangement which creates 
a necessity for labor, and how this arrangement is a fruit of 



142 SERMONS. 

the divine goodness in all the arts and employments of life, 
so we can see how the goodness of God may have made 
prayer a necessary means of procuring many indispensable 
blessings, on account of its direct benefit to us. Nothing in 
its place more cultivates the character than fervent, effectual, 
or energized prayer; and there is, in itself considered, no 
higher privilege to man than this communing and pleading 
with the Most High. It may be found true that prayer is 
the chief instrument of our spiritual cultivation, considered 
only in its direct influence on ourselves. Look at it in this 
light : 

Temptation has no power to the soul while in communion 
with its Maker ; 

Every truth in the Scriptures completes its work in us 
when it leads us to address God with appropriate feeling ; 

Providence completes its work in us when it leads to bless 
the hand that feeds, to kiss the hand that smites us. "Is 
any afflicted, let him pray ; " and, to cite no more illustra- 
tions, 

Sympathy with a Holy Redeemer, in regard to his king- 
dom, gains nowhere on the heart as in prayer. 

A fourth difficulty is with the Omniscience, Foreknowledge, 
and Unchangeableness, of God. The force of the objection 
is this : " If he has determined from all eternity what he 
will do, or if he knows everything that we can tell him, our 
telling him cannot change his view, so as to induce him to 
change his purpose." This chilling argument is with many 
persons very powerful. It is strange that it should be so 



EFFECTUAL PRAYER. 143 

with some ; who, if asked whether thej believe in the fore- 
knowledge of God, would promptly answer, By no means. 
But with those who believe that all things are known to him, 
from the foundation of the world, there is an easy escape 
from this difficulty. They may know their reasoning to be 
unsound, because it does not apply to anything else where 
they may test its validity. They might just as well refuse 
to plant as to pray, on this ground. God knows the results 
in the one case as much as in the other ; and your sowing 
the seed in expectation of a crop is just as inconsistent with 
his foreknowledge as your praying for rain, or success in 
business, or the conversion of a soul, in expectation of such 
result. Let it be borne in mind, that no such view of God's 
attributes should ever be held as reduces him to a machine, 
an automaton, instead of a rational being, thinking, deciding, 
and acting, in view of facts. None can doubt that the char- 
acters and conduct of men influence the purposes of God. If 
a man obeys God, he gives him the reward of obedience ; and 
if he disobeys, the punishment due to disobedience. Then it 
is manifest that our actions affect the purposes and actions of 
God ; and why not our worship, our praying, considered either 
as praying or as a form of obedience ? Let two men present 
themselves before God at the same moment, — a blasphemer, 
and an humble suppliant, — the one to mock, the other to 
pray. Do they both affect him alike ? Will his treatment 
of both be the same ? Impossible ! 

A kindred objection to prayer, and almost identical with 
this, is, that " God is acting from fixed laws ; prayer for 



144 SERMONS. 

rain can do no good, because rain is the result of specific 
material causes, which act by regular and purely mechanical 
forces ; not depending upon any present volition of the Cre- 
ator, but merely upon that original volition which called them 
into existence." Now, here it is assumed. 

That no other than material causes or forces can affect 
matter. This is contradicted by creation, by miracles, and 
by the moral purposes for which the universe was created. 

It assumes that God has left no place for his own direct 
action. 

It assumes that you know all the causes of events ; and 
that prayer is not one. 

The Holiness and Justice of God too have discouraged some 
from praying. This I esteem as really the greatest difficulty 
on the whole subject; and yet that which sceptics never 
suggest, and the worldly-minded do not feel. The other 
difficulties exist only in our imaginations ; this lies deep in 
the character of Jehovah, and the principles of his eternal 
kingdom. This is a difficulty which no reasoning would 
ever have removed, which no efforts of man could ever have 
diminished. To meet and remove this, the whole arrange- 
ment of the incarnation, death, resurrection, and mediation, 
of Christ, was made. To this I understand the term " right- 
eous " in the text to refer. It is a technical term, and must, 
by every true biblical scholar, be admitted to mean more 
than a mere worldly uprightness. It belongs to the man 
who can say, "In the Lord have I righteousness;" who 
has found in the Lord Jesus the baptism of a legal purifica- 



EFFECTUAL PEAYER. 145 

tion, extending first to the conscience, then to the heart ; 
who, being freely pardoned for Christ's sake, freely obeys 
the law of Christ ; who has boldness to approach the mercy- 
seat, but solely because Christ is the great intercessor, ever 
representing the believer and his prayers before the Father. 
On this Grospel-ground the justice and holiness of God pre- 
sent no obstacles to the prayer of the penitent believer, living 
in the righteousness of a practical obedience. We are exhorted 
to come boldly to a throne of grace, not because we have 
never sinned, but " because we have such a High Priest." 
How beautifully is it described in the third chapter of Zech- 
ariah ! Joshua the high priest represents, not the great 
High Priest, but that royal priesthood of which the church 
consists. He "was clothed in filthy garments." That was 
his character estimated by the perfect law of God. And 
Satan was standing at his right hand to resist him. But the 
Lord, who redeems his church by the shedding of his own 
blood, said to those who stood before him, "Take away the 
filthy garments from him." " And unto him he said, Behold 
I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee ; and I will 
clothe thee with a change of raiment. And I said, Let them 
set a fair mitre upon his head. So they set a fair mitre upon 
his head, and clothed him with garments." That explains 
the manner, and exhibits the reason why human prayers 
are heard by him who is infinite in holiness. The Phari- 
see and Publican, praying in the temple, illustrate by contrast 
the spirit of faith and self-righteousness. In fact, it is a test 
of self-righteousness, that when worldly it seldom prays, and 
13 



146 SERMONS. 

never prays fervently; when religious, it is formal, and 
never prays with an earnest importunity of supplication. 

These, we believe, are the main theoretical difficulties 
which induce us to relax in the exercise of prayer. And 
thus far we have reasoned independently of the authority of 
the Scriptures ; not that we imagine there can be any other 
positive ground of confidence on this point, nor that we be- 
lieve the natural reason is competent to determine this great 
question. But we have desired to show, simply, that there 
are in reality no solid objections to the doctrine we are now 
exhibiting. The argument from the Scriptures may be 
briefly stated. 

II. Prayer will prevail with God. — Let us turn to 
1. The commands. — They are such as these : " Pray 
without ceasing." " I will, therefore, that men pray every- 
where." "The end of all things is at hand; be therefore 
sober, and watch unto prayer." " Seek the Lord while he 
may be found." Commands of this nature abound, and are 
addressed, with the other general precepts of God's law, to 
all mankind. Their use as arguments is indirect. They 
prove the prevalence of prayer, on the ground of God's 
rewarding all obedience by blessings appropriate to the form 
of obedience. " The hand of the diligent makes rich. Blessed 
are they that hunger, for they shall be' filled." Thus is there 
an appropriateness, in each reward bestowed by grace, to the 
form of obedience rewarded. And it is obvious that the 
appropriate reward to prayer is a bestowment of the bless- 
ings sought in prayer. There are, also, 



EFFECTUAL PRAYER. 147 

2. Promises to prayer, lavished in prodigal bounty, like 
the rich fruits of the earth, springing up through all these 
glorious fields of revealed truth and grace. — '-Ask, and it 
shall be given you. Whosoever shall call upon the name of 
the Lord, shall be saved. He will regard the prayer of the 
destitute. He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek 
him." On these no comment need be offered. They are 
the promises and pledges of the Eternal God. What more 
can human faith require? 

3. The doctrine of prayer. — It is connected in Scripture 
with the Trinity. 

The Father is represented as on a throne of grace. This, 
of course, is figurative, but real. It is expressive of his 
feelings, arrangements, and moral attitude, toward men. 
When you hear of the throne of judgment, you understand 
that our Creator will deal with us as a judge. When you 
read of the mercy-seat, you may regard him as hearing 
prayer. 

The Holy Spirit is represented as interceding for us, by 
creating within our hearts the desire to pray, and teaching 
us how to address the Most High. 

The Son is represented as interceding in heaven for us. 

This is the scriptural doctrine of prayer. And it evi- 
dently involves the fact, that God regards prayer as an 
important exercise on our part. 

4. The history of prayer is among the most interesting 
portions of the Bible. — It is one of the many features in 
which that wondrous book stands entirely apart from all 



148 SERMONS. 

other books. It is a constant display of the condescension 
and kindness of God. And it is well worthy of remark, that 
with the record of the greater part of the prayers there 
described the answer to the prayer is likewise recorded. 
Prayers, and answer to prayer, as much distinguish the lives 
of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Daniel, as any other events. 
Jacob was named Israel because he prevailed in prayer in a 
princely manner. Samuel, Elijah, Hezekiah, David, called 
on the Lord for special blessings, and the blessings were 
granted. The case of Elijah is cited in immediate connection 
with the text. And, to encourage our faith, it is mentioned 
that he partook of the infirmities common to our nature. All 
the requests made to Christ, when on earth, were prayers ; 
and none that was proper in its nature was refused. And 
in the Book of Revelation the power of prayer is strikingly 
presented. After John had seen incense preserved in golden 
vials before the throne, as a symbol which taught him that 
prayer long unanswered is still not forgotten in heaven, he 
then saw (8 : 3 — 5) this vision : " An angel came and 
stood at the altar, having a golden censer ; and there was 
given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with 
the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was 
before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which 
came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before Grod 
out of the angel's hand." Now, these long-remembered 
prayers are about to be answered ; and what is the conse- 
quence ? They had prayed for the overthrow of superstition, 
ignorance, and oppression. And now the angel takes the 



EFFECTUAL PRAYER. 149 

censer, and fills it with fire from off the altar, and casts it 
into the earth: "And there were voices, and thunderings, 
and lightnings, and an earthquake." Men everywhere saw 
the lightnings, and heard the thunderings ; but probably few 
of them suspected how much the prayers before the throne 
had to do with them. 

We must now briefly illustrate the other principle in the 
text : 

III. The EFFICACY OF PRAYER IS PROPORTIONED TO ITS 

FERVID ENERGY. — The Holy Spirit energizes the human 
soul in prayer. He kindles a holy fire, but it is on the altar 
of the heart ; he produces groanings, but they are described 
as those "which cannot be uttered." There are traces 
throughout the sacred volume of these deep movements of 
the soul, these unutterable groanings. Then there are many 
manifestations of the energized prayer symbolically repre- 
sented, as in the wrestling of Jacob ; and directly described, 
as in the praying of him whose " sweat was, as it were, great 
drops of blood, falling to the ground," — who, in the days of 
his flesh, " offered up prayers and supplications, with strong 
crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him from 
death." 

We instinctively feel that the highest degree and the 
strongest expression of approbation belongs to the highest 
forms of character. But, as already noticed, there is no 
more distinctive exhibition of the highest form of religious 
character than the habit of fervent and earnest prayer. It 
is connected with the most thorough conquest of that enslave- 
13* 



150 SERMONS. 

ment to sense which is the curse and degradation of man. 
It shows a mind living in the precincts of the world of light. 
It is a conquest over that indolence and brutal sluggishness 
which mark our debased enslavement to an infirm and earth- 
born body. The energetic prayer shows that the soul has 
caught at least a glimpse of the heavenly glory ; breathed 
the pure breath of a heavenly atmosphere; enjoyed com- 
munion with its divine Saviour; burst, for a moment, its 
accursed bonds ; and now it cries, " My soul thirsteth after 
God, in a dry and thirsty land, where no waters be." 

Now, there is an innate sense of propriety and justice 
which would incline us to expect that God would put some 
signal mark of his approbation upon such a character, rather 
than upon a worldly and a half-worldly character. We 
should expect to see him admit such a soul nearer to his 
presence ; giving it more marks of his approbation, and show- 
ing that he feels, as we do, increasing sympathy with those 
who have increasing attachment to the objects and persons 
we most esteem. Some prayers are unseasoned wood on the 
altar, and unprepared incense in the censer. There is more 
smoke than fire, — more simmering and smouldering than 
flame. There have been no pains to dry the wood and the 
frankincense, and hence so many perform the service at the 
altar unskilfully. '' Let my prayer," said one who knew his 
privilege, " let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense, 
and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." 
There was something of real value burning on that altar. A 
precious life was there immolated ; a lamb was consumed ; 



EFFECTUAL PRAYER. 151 

tlie flame, like a spirit, lifted up the sacrifice, and carried it 
to God; the cloud of incense mounted, and bore its sweet 
odor to the skies. 

Such is prayer, — "the effectual, fervent prayer,' the 
inwrought prayer of the righteous man." It burns on the 
heart as God's holy altar : it consumes the idols of the heart : 
it makes a sacrifice of every interest and every faculty ; there 
is a life given up there, — "a living sacrifice, holy and 
acceptable to God." And is it not probable that God will 
accept such sacrifice? — that he will signally express his 
approbation of a prayer which is wrought in the soul by the 
gracious power of his own Spirit, who thus ''maketh inter- 
cession for us; " and wrought in the soul, too, by our own 
earnest endeavors to learn to pray, and to be ready to pray ? 
0, yes ; it must be that there is a peculiar power and preva- 
lence in this energized, inwrought prayer, above that of the 
sleepy, careless, half-hearted praying that is the fruit of no 
effort, neither of the Holy Spirit nor the human spirit, but 
the drowsy task performed under the lash of conscience. 

It must be that God has an ear for the cry of the humble, 
the needy, and the importunate, while "the rich he sends 
empty away." Look, then, into the Scriptures, and see how 
this doctrine of degrees enters even into this economy of 
grace, where the idea of human merit is discarded. It affects 
the responsibilities of men. " Where much is given, much 
will be required." It affects the actions of men. "He that 
soweth bountifully shall reap bountifully." He that "gained 
five talents " has " five cities; " while he that gained " ten 



152 SERMONS. 

talents" has ''ten cities," as his reward. Solomon asked. 






earnestly and supremely, for the best thing, and it was given 
as a man never had it ; and all inferior things were added, 
Abraham, at his first prayer for Sodom, had the salvation of 
the city promised on the condition of there being fifty right- 
eous persons in it ; and the more he prayed, the more he was 
emboldened, and the more favorable conditions he obtained. 
Who knows but he might have saved Sodom for his own sake 
alone, as an interceding child of God, if his faith had dared 
go so far ? Christ distinctly shows us that the widow gained 
her cause before the unjust judge, simply through this feature 
of her prayer. It was energized, pervaded with desire and 
purpose, with will, and patience, and power. " The efiectual, 
fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." 

Then there is great folly in despising prayer. — Many 
persons regard praying as a mark of weakness, and especially 
do they so look upon men's meeting together for the express 
purpose of praying. Few, however, go so far as to affirm 
that it is an indication of weakness in a father to assemble 
his family daily for the purpose of worshipping God. But " a 
weekly meeting of men for prayer is too insignificant an 
employment for sensible people." Creature, dost thou know 
that thy Creator condescends to be present there, and to hear 
with interest those praises and supplications ? — and who art 
thou that thou shouldst despise it ? 

Sinner, thou wilt pray somewhere. The day is hastening 
when thou wilt call for help. 



EFFECTUAL PRAYER. 153 

Proud reasoner, who art thou that layest down rules for 
God's intercourse with man ? 

Prayer is the highest form of human power. — It is 
power over the Almighty, who says, "Take hold upon my 
strength." It reaches his providence and his Spirit. It 
affects time and eternity. It is the best guardianship we can 
exercise over our own interests and families, the church, the 
nation, and the race. There have been no men of greater 
power than Abraham, Jacob, and Daniel. When you see a 
mighty orator rising before a body of senators, and rolling 
back the tide of unfriendly feeling which had been excited 
toward him and his state, you regard it as an exhibition of 
great power. I will show you a greater exercise of power. 
When the cloud of divine vengeance was ready to burst on 
guilty Israel, Moses stood alone, and held it up, staying those 
storms of wrath. That is power indeed. 

Here is indicated the source of weakness in the church. 
We have not yet learned to pray. I mean, we do not exer- 
cise the higher kind of prayer, nor understand the work of 
intercession. Luther used to pray for three hours each day. 
When the Wesleys were on the field, they were absorbed in 
details of work ; but in the preparation for that work, they 
were mighty in prayer. Paul prayed, " without ceasing," to 
the close of his life. To prevail with Inen, we must prevail 
with God, as Israel did. When the true church shall have 
come, nothing will more distinguish her than her praying. 
When Satan's kingdom is about to fall, our present style of 
praying will have come to be regarded as very infantile. 



IX. 

PARENTAL SOLICIIJDE. 



'•anil tf)E feater inas spent in tlje fiottic, antJ sTje cast tf)£ c'^ilXi 
untitx one oftf)c stiutis. Snlist)eiD£nt,anti sat ^ex lioton obex 
against f)im, a goot toag off, as it ioexe a l)oiD = sf)ot: for sf)£ sailJ, 
Eft mf not see t\)e icatf) of tf)e cfjilli. SnU sf)e sat o&er against 
i)im, anU ItftctJ up fjcr boicc, anti inrpt." — Gen. 21: 15,16. 

If the familj of Abraham had sustained no peculiar rela- 
tions to the purposes of God and the redemption of our race, 
their history would possess a peculiar charm in other respects. 
But all other considerations are lost in the moral splendor 
which shines back on them from him who, in the fulness of 
time, condescended to take on him the seed of Abraham. 

" The purpose of God, according to election " stood, "not 
of works, but of him that calleth." The Messiah should 
come from Abraham ; but through Isaac, and not Ishmael ; 
through Jacob, and •not Esau. And the purposes of God 
embrace, as their instruments, the whole series of human 
actions and human events, without reference to their moral 
character ; without aifecting it, or diminishing, in the minutest 
degree, man's responsibility for his own actions. 



PARENTAL SOLICITUDE. 155 

In the instance before us we have Sarah's expedient, man- 
ifesting a want of faith in God ; polygamy bringing discord 
into Abraham's family; the impudence of Hagar and her 
boy becoming insupportable. And yet all this series of 
human follies executing, in the end, God's wise purpose, that 
" the child of the bond-woman should not inherit with the 
son of the promise." 

When Abraham found the house too strait to contain both 
parties, he sent Hagar away to her kindred, in Egypt. And 
it is on that journey that we now find her in deep distress. 
She seems to have lost her way, and to have expended her 
provisions, and especially to have exhausted their supply of 
water. Ishmael was now quite sixteen years old — rather 
large to carry ; yet she seems to have borne the burden of 
his fainting frame, after the parching of thirst had begun to 
consume his strength. Mr. Belzoni says : " It is difficult to 
form a correct idea of a desert, without having been in one. 
It is an endless plain of sand and stones, without woods, or 
shelter, or herbage, or water, generally. The springs are 
four, six, and eight days' journey apart. Sometimes a trav- 
eller approaches one, and finds the, water intolerably bitter ; 
and when the calamity happens that the next, which is anx- 
iously sought for, is found dry, the misery of such a situa- 
tion cannot well be described. Many 'perish there, victims 
of the most horrible thirst. It is then that the value of a 
cup of water is really felt. In short, to be thirsty in the 
desert without water, exposed to the burning sun, without 
shelter, and no hopes of finding either, is one of the greatest 



156 SERMOXS. 

sufferings that a man can sustain. The eyes grow inflamed, 
the tongue and lips SAvell, a hollow sound is heard in the ear, 
which brings on deafness ; and, if no water is found, death 
comes slowly and horribly to his relief" 

In this situation we find a broken-hearted widow-mother, 
and her boy. Ishmael must die ! That seemed inevitable. 
But how could she look upon the noble boy, and see his 
lustrous eye glazed and glaring, his heaving chest, his pro- 
truded tongue? — how could she see him die? She could not; 
and so she carried him to a poor bush that grew solitary in 
that wide waste ; both that a little shelter might be found 
from the withering rays of the sun, and that she might con- 
ceal from herself the sims of an ano;uish she could not alle- 
viate, and the agonies of a death she had no power to avert. 
Her sorrow was right, but her despair was sinful. Ishmael, 
too, w^as a child of promise. His maturity and manhood 
were pledged by him that cannot change ; and his race is, to 
this day, just as permanent, though not so unmixed, as that of 
the other son of one of the most remarkable men this world 
has contained. It has been well said, it was despair in oppo- 
sition to God's plain promises, to her own experience, and to 
fact also. It was despair, not only when a promising God 
was at hand : but despair of water, when abundance was at 
hand. A fountain was near ; but she did not see it. 

I have selected this case as presenting a subject deeply 
interesting to us all, though in various ways. That sub- 
ject is 



PARENTAL SOLICITUDE. 157 

Parental Solicitude. 

Here it assumed one form. But it has very many, accord- 
ing to the circumstances in which children may be placed, 
and the views of parents concerning them. We inquire, 

I. What are the proper objects of parental solic- 
itude ? 

1. Salvation is supreme. — It is not the only object of 
a parent's anxiety, but the chief You need no words to 
prove it ; yet the distinct contemplation of it may be very 
useful. I will present these considerations to show it. The 
favor of God is above all favor. One great object of every 
parent's anxiety is to secure the esteem, and even admiration 
of men for their children. The success of a child at a school- 
examination, or a college-exhibition, appears to make a parent 
happier than a much greater amount of admiration bestowed 
upon himself What parent does not delight in the good 
appearance, good behavior, and good reputation of his son ? 
No man who deserves to be called by the endearing epithet 
of father. Nor is it an improper desire in itself But it 
may be made so, by reason of its disproportion, or the means 
employed to secure the result. And we have only to make 
the distinct appeal to a rational being, to get the right an- 
swer : which is better for your child, and how much better, 
the approbation of men, or the favor of God ? In this world, 
in the day of judgment, or far on in the progress of our in- 
terminable existence, which would you deliberately choose for 
your child — the admiration, the love of man, without God ; or 
14 



158 SERMONS. 

the love of God, and with it that of all good beings ? Pa- 
rents, this is an argument, not for your logical sense, but for 
your hearts ; and there I wish to present it. "Would you, 
can you, deliberately lay out a plan of education and life for 
your child, in which the goal shall be, the homage, even the 
love of his fellow-men ; or should you choose the favor of 
God, the Father of mercies, the love of Christ the Saviour, 
the fellowship of the Holy Ghost the sanctifier ? But this 
is what we understand as the first element of salvation : the 
forgiving love of God in Christ ; a state of reconciliation and 
covenant- alliance with Him, the infinite, the eternal, the 
omnipotent Jehovah, Jesus; Maker, Upholder, Governor, 
Guide of all ; Saviour of them who love his law, hate their 
sins, and commit themselves to him. In this world or the 
next, in earth or heaven, there can be no comparison. If 
the favor of either is to be sacrificed for that of the other, if 
" the friendship of the world is enmity with God," your child 
must first please God, and then whomsoever else he can, con- 
sistently with that. And again, a holy heart is the greatest 
wealth your child can ever possess. Money is an excellent 
thing ; and parents generally prize it next to men's esteem, 
for their ofispring. But the true wealth of man is within 
him, not without him. God has pointed us to the mine of 
true wealth, in his law : pure, noble afiections, purposes, 
and principles, that wear not and waste not, but grow with 
time, and brighten with the wear and tear of life ; freshening 
in its very decay, pouring out their treasures in proportion 
as other riches perish in our grasp. This is wealth : love to 



PARENTAL SOLICITUDE. 159 

Godj faith in Jesus, humilityj penitence, integrity, fortitude, 
vast sympathies with God and his purposes, benevolence to 
man, communion with God ; these are the blessings included 
in Christ's salvation. Father, would you have your child 
pious, or rich, if he could be but one ; to die like the humblest 
child of God, or like the most splendid votary of worldly 
honors? And when you answer that, then you will say, 
with us, salvation is the first object of parental solicitude. 
We have another reason for it. 

Heaven and hell are the alternative for every human 
being. Every child must live a probationer here : must live 
under the law and the gospel ; must die ; must be judged ; 
must rise to life, and joy, and glory immortal, or sink to 
shame, and darkness, and remorse, and despair, an outcast 
from God, and holiness, and blessedness, forever ! Here is 
no room for reasoning. We deal with facts, and must regu- 
late our opinions and actions by them. Your child may get 
great possessions, and fare sumptuously every day, and be 
clothed in fine linen ; and yet, when he dies, may lift up his 
eyes in hell, being tormented in that flame. He may have 
the genius of Byron ; but carry that genius, with a proud, 
selfish, sensual heart, to the tribunal of his Judge, and to 
the allotments of eternity. Salvation is first for adults, for 
kings, for beggars, for learned men, for fools, for young 
men, young women, for children. " One thing is needful " 
for all. 

But, while we thus insist on the superiority and supremacy 



160 SERMONS. 

of salvation as the object of parental solicitude, this does not 
express the whole truth. 

2. Many other objects harmonize by being made sub- 
ordinate to that. — This point opens to us a wider field than 
it would be possible or appropriate to the occasion for us to 
traverse. Hagar wanted water for her child ; an object, the 
value of which in this cooler climate we maj seldom have 
had occasion rightly to prize. It was entirely proper for 
this mother, at that time, earnestly to long for a spring of 
water. So there are a thousand wants pertaining to man's 
complex being which it is legitimate to indulge. Concerning 
them all, it is only important now to notice that two rules 
pertain to them. The first is, that what is legitimate, proper, 
useful, and healthful, should be distinguished from all that 
is the opposite. Neither fashion, vanity, pride, nor any evil 
inclination in the parent, should be allowed to select the 
objects which are to be sought for the child. A sound judg- 
ment, enlightened by a correct knowledge of what God has 
made necessary for the most perfect growth of the body, 
strengthening the mind, elevating and refining the heart, and 
perfecting the entire physical and mental constitution — that 
should determine, with every father and mother, the very 
momentous question, What shall I seek for my child ? If 
anything will impair the tone of any one function of the 
body, or hinder the most perfect formation of the mind and 
the character, that must be rejected, no matter if it casts 
your child out of what is called '' society." If you were 
living in China, with your present knowledge of the human 



PARENTAL SOLICITUDE. 161 

frame, you ought not to choose to screw your little daughter's 
foot into an iron shoe, hecause it is genteel or fashionable. 
Let her foot grow as large as a comfortable shoe and vigor- 
ous exetcise will allow it to grow. And yet, do not doubt 
that American fashion has some customs just as absurd in 
themselves as that Chinese custom. The other rule I alluded 
to is, make all other legitimate objects subordinate to salva- 
tion. They are important, and they have their place ; but it 
is a secondary or a tertiary place. An enlightened parental 
love cannot hesitate to say, first of all, my child must be 
delivered from this blight and curse which rests upon our 
race. God has provided the means of such deliverance ; and 
the application of them is life's greatest work. Deliverance 
from sin, conformity to Christ's character and Christ's law ; a 
life like Christ's ; the death of a Christian; the hope, the treas- 
ure, the eternity, of a Christian, — that is first for my child. 

That point determined, another presents itself for our 
consideration : 

II. God has manifested a supreme regard for that 
FORM OP parental SOLICITUDE. — We may go, for a 
moment, beyond the text before us, to see that God regarded 
Hagar's anxiety for her child, though her want was but for 
a gushing spring ; though she sought to save but the tem- 
poral life of her boy. It is sufficient for our purpose that we 
show that, in that stupendous arrangement which is the crown 
of all Jehovah's works, he has made provision for children. 
So that when parents regard the salvation of their children 
as of supreme importance, and with intense solicitude, they 
14* 



162 SERMONS. 

may be assured that he who pointed Hagar to the living 
fountain ; nay, who furnished it, has regarded that object as 
that parent does. Observe, 

1. The history of children as presented by thB Scrip- 
tures. — A few instances from many will answer our purpose. 

When God makes promise to Abraham, he embraces his 
children in it. And the reason is incidentally presented on 
one occasion. ''I know him," says Jehovah, "that he will 
command his children and his household after him, and they 
shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, 
that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he has 
spoken of him." This manifests God's interest in the pious 
training of children. Then see the honor put upon children 
piously educated, as Moses was, as Joseph was, as Samuel 
was. What honors came on those men, in building up the 
church of God, above all the honors of a worldly kind that 
the most ambitious parent ever dreamed of for his child ? 
Then see the success of efforts at relicfious trainincr in John 
the Baptist, not to say in Christ, and in Timothy. And 
contrast with this the sad results of neglecting this supremely 
important duty, as in the case of Eli's children, and in every 
age of Israel's degeneracy. There the fatal decline began : 
parents became worldly, and then the children ungodly. 

But there is a stronger view of the case in another fiict. 

2. God has arranged his covenant of grace icith refer- 
ence to the salvation of children. — It appears under the 
Old Testament in two distinct forms. The one was the ap- 
plication of the seal of the covenant to children. The other 



PARENTAL SOLICITUDE. 163 

was a specific requirement that they should be thoroughly 
brought under the influence of God's law and government. 
I need not here expand. Then, in the New Testament it is 
to us perfectly clear that the same great principle is con- 
tinued, because our Lord treated children as if they had the 
same relation to his kingdom under the New Testament as 
under the Old. The disciples made a mistake a little differ- 
ent in form from that of many in our day, but in spirit the 
same. They thought that the nature of this dispensation 
was such that little children had nothing to do with it. But 
they were in error. The Redeemer said, " Of such is the 
kingdom of heaven." Now, some think the ordinance of 
baptism desecrated when applied to an infant. I must say 
it of them as beloved brethren, their notion of baptism is 
superstitious. Does it desecrate the ordinance when they 
make a mistake, and apply it to an unconverted man ? Cer- 
tainly not. And is not the consecration of childhood to God 
by believing parents an act as holy as the application of 
water ? Is it not a holy thing to proclaim to the world, and 
especially to godly parents, that God is in covenant with 
them for their children as well as themselves ? Or do they 
believe that God is in reality no more to the offspring of 
them that love him, than to the offspring of the world? 
And if he is, why may he not express it now by a covenant 
seal, just as he used to do? Circumcision and religious 
instruction were once the two great expressions of God's 
regard for the chief solicitude of pious parents. Now it is 
baptism and instruction. It used to be that when any came 



164 SERMONS. 

into the church, thej and their households received the 
bloody seal. And then their parents were required to teach 
them the works and the laws of God incessantly and assidu- 
ously. NoWj when Lydia or the jailer enters the church, 
they and their households are baptized ; and then the parents 
are enjoined to train their children "in the nurture and 
admonition of the Lord." 

Thus it is manifested that our God regards with supreme 
interest the solicitude of parents for the spiritual and eternal 
welfare of their children. 

• This subject possesses a great and manifold interest 
for the church of God. — She loves the souls of all, and 
feels a tender concern for the young. She looks for the 
perpetuating of truth and righteousness to the generation 
that is now advancing to maturity. "We must die, and lay 
down all these sacred interests, these holy enterprises. We 
shall leave this sacred cause in an enemy's country. Who 
will take it up, and carry it forward ? With deep solicitude 
we turn to the children we see around us. And what a 
relief to our fears and anxieties to know that God's people 
are trying to bring them to love the Saviour, and that God 
promises to bless their efforts ! But there is more than that. 
These children of the church are related to the church. We 
are as yet formalists in the baptism of infants. It means 
more than the church of our day sees in it. It has none of 
the absurdity of water-regeneration, but it has the deep sig- 
nificancy of a spiritual relation. There abides on the church 
a most solemn responsibility in regard to baptized children, 



PARENTAL SOLICITUDE. 165 

as there exists between them and the church a most tender 
and solemn relation. We now content ourselves by laying 
it on parents and on the Sunday-school to teach the children. 
But it is not enough. The church must yet take up this 
subject, and understand it, and treat her infant members as 
God designed they should be. We are often looking vaguely 
for a great revival, and yet shrinking from the detail of daily 
duties. But I may not now tarry to specify. 

Parents^ this subject is emphatically yours. — And to 
you I dedicate it. How, my beloved friends, who are of the 
congregation, and not of the church, how have you heard all 
this ? Do you believe, with me, that piety in the hearts of 
your dear children is their first necessity ? Do you want 
them housed in God's precious ark before the storm arises ? 
Do you not want them armed with God's panoply for life's 
great conflict? But you, dear friends, are responsible for 
this result. You acknowledge yourselves responsible for 
their moral characters. You will be greatly mortified if 
they fail in that ; and why not forever reproach yourselves if 
they come short of heaven ? Depend upon it, you have not 
surveyed your whole responsibilities, if you do not feel this. 
0, in the name of him who said, " Suffer the little children to 
come unto me," I would say, hinder them no longer by your 
indifference and unbelief. Look on them. Some of them 
have been sick, and they are raised again. Look on them : 
they must go forth and do battle on this world's great field. 
Look on them : they must die ; they want Christ then. 0, 
show them the way yourselves; say to them, " Come, dear 



166 SERMONS. 

children, follow me ; I am going to commit my soul to Jesus, 
and to follow him." 

Parents in the church, how many are in your families of 
whom you cannot believe that they love God ? Here is 
obligation, and here is encouragement for you. In baptism 
you acknowledged the Lord's right to your children, and 
your obligations to seek their salvation supremely. And in 
baptism he presented himself as having all power in heaven 
and earth to save. And you must not undertake this work 
as if he had no part in it. Give him his place, and take 
your own. I will suggest where I think the failure is with 
sincere believers. Some do not establish their authority. 
There Eli failed. They cannot maintain the laws of the 
house in all things. It is to be feared that the children of 
such parents will not be converted. Some, on the contrary, 
make it all authority. The parental office has, indeed, an 
under stratum of authority ; on that everything stands. But 
the visible, sensible element is mutual confidence. Encourage 
your children to talk out their hearts to you, and let not the 
first intelligence of their seriousness come to you from 
strangers. Adapt yourselves to their peculiar temperaments. 
It is worth a year's study of a child's temperament to know 
how to approach it, and gain its confidence, and make it feel 
at ease with you. Be deeply pious, and then be natural in 
dealing with children. Then feel your utter insufficiency, 
and your dependence on God. And of this feeling prayer is 
the natural expression. 

And what an interest have the young in this subject ! — 



PARENTAL SOLICITUDE. 167 

Some of you are not baptized. There is a loss to you in this. 
But let it only make you the more earnest to establish a 
covenant with God for yourselves. He does visit the iniqui- 
ties of parents on children, their unbelief and their disobe- 
dience to his commands. But he makes a way of escape by 
personal repentance and faith. Some of you have been bap- 
tized in the holy name of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Do 
you know, dear children and young friends, that the eternal 
God has thus showed his kind regard for you ? That is what 
your baptism means. Think of your name, — John, or Eliza, 
or George, or Mary ; it has been associated with the holy 
name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in an ordinance 
of God's appointment. And are you growing up regardless 
not only of the anxieties of your pious father or mother, but 
also of the kindness of God ? When do you expect to take 
the vows of God upon yourselves ; to return to your covenant 
God, and seek his great salvation ? Will you think seriously 
what your being baptized means ? Ask your parents. Come 
and ask your pastor. But, above all, ask God. 



X. 

CHILDHOOD PRAISING THE LORD. 



"^ni infjen t^e £f)icf priests ant scrifics saia t^e inonUerfuI tfjings tf)at 
tie iitJ, anU tfje ci^tltiren crs'ins in tfje temple, anU saging, ^osanna 
to tf)e son of Ba&itr; t^eg inere sore iispleasei; anti saiti unto i)\m, 
p.earest tf)ou iuf)at tfjese sag? Snt 3esus saitf) unto tf)cm,gea: 
$abe ge neber rcab, ©ut of tfte mouti^s of iabes anU sucltlinss tf)ou 
^ast perfected praise?" — Matt. 21: 15, 16. 

We shall never grow weary of contemplating the earthly 
life of Christ. It is not so much the showing forth of Divine 
goodness and power, as the concealment of them under the 
limited forms of human nature. Yet this concealment is 
manifestation. Glory divuie comes forth in human speech 
and deed everywhere. The miraculous deeds of our Saviour 
were not efforts, nor exhibitions ; they were never advertised 
beforehand. No high-wrought expectation was produced in 
the public mind, such as impostors and Satan's wonder- 
workers always aim to create. They were performed, not as 
an end, but rather as incidental to his great work. They are 
signs that mankind would naturally and properly expect from 
one of such a nature, coming on such an errand. His spirit- 
ual work being the greatest departure from all that we call 
laws of nature, it is natural to suppose that in outward 



CHILDHOOD PRAISING THE LORD. 169 

actions he would manifest the same departure from the ordi- 
nary course of providence. 

He had just come into Jerusalem attended by the mani- 
festation of a more open triumph than he had ever before 
permitted the people to display. He had entered the temple 
the second time as its lord, expelling them that defiled it. 
The diseased and the maimed had there gathered around 
him, and he had healed them. 

And now we are to witness an instance of the contrasted 
effects produced in different persons by this display of his 
divine goodness and power. His benignant form was seen 
rising slowly up the great steps of the eastern gate. An 
eager, rushing throng were pressing along on his path, pre- 
ceding and following, and gathering as closely to his side as 
respect for his person would allow. The tide of popular feel- 
ing had long been swelling, and had now reached a height 
where it must burst through its barriers. He enters the 
temple, its King and Lord. He commands the traffickers 
and brokers to quit its hallowed premises, and find other 
places more suited to the employments of commerce. And 
then, as if to satisfy any honest inquiry concerning his 
authority, he turned on the right and on the left, wherever 
faith had brought a poor cripple or a blind man, to lay them 
at his feet, and gave them sight and soundness. This only 
served to swell still higher the tide of devout and joyous 
feeling in some hearts, and to increase the hatred and envy 
in others. For many months now he had been going about 
among the people of that nation, speaking as never man 
15 



170 SERMONS. 

spake, exhibiting a control over the powers of nature as 
wonderful in its simplicity and ease of manifestation, as it 
was beneficent in its results. The land was full of the fame 
of him. Travellers from one part of the country carried the 
report to another of his mighty works, only to be told of 
similar deeds among those to whom they brought the report. 
Men were grouped in the places of public resort to describe 
what they had seen and heard. Children sat entranced as 
their mothers described the gentle, holy, majestic being that 
had come among them to scatter blessings. Whenever they 
felt themselves to be safe from the frown of scribe and 
priest, the people dared to believe, and say, "This is the 
promised Son of David, Zion's king, her long-expected Mes- 
siah." And what parents dared to say under shelter of the 
domestic roof, the children dared to shout within the hallowed 
walls of the temple. Beholding the Lord surrounded with 
the grateful group to whom he had just restored their long- 
lost powers of sight and walking, their enthusiasm could 
contain itself no longer ; and, forming themselves into an 
impromptu volunteer choir, they made the temple resound 
with an anthem it had never heard before. Catching the 
strain which the multitude had poured forth on the way to 
the temple, they echoed its burden — Hosanna to the Son of 
David. 

Whatever the Lord did and said in Jerusalem, publicly, 
was in sight and hearing of some of the rulers of the church. 
The Scribes and Pharisees had witnessed this wonderful pro- 
cession, when Jesus rode on an ass' colt to the temple amid 



CHILDHOOD PRAISING THE LORD. 171 

the acclamations of the people, who strewed their cloaks and 
branches of trees in his path. Thej had seen him enter the 
temple with the authoritative air of its proprietor, and with 
resistless command bid them who profaned its courts to quit 
the sacred premises. Thej witnessed these wonderful works 
of mercy and authority. And now, to crown all, they heard 
the hosannas of the children. Their envy and hatred could 
bear no more. But what resort or relief had they ? There 
was probably no statute against these proceedings of Christ, 
or those of the people. All they could do was, to appeal to 
the Lord himself, and ask him if he heard these things. 
This is as much as to say : '' Can you possibly sanction this 
fanaticism? — senseless children calling you the Son of David, 
and crying to you for mercy ; thus really making you to be 
the Messiah ! " 

To this remonstrance the Lord replied simply by a quota- 
tion from their own Scripture, taking it from the Greek 
version, with which they were familiar: "Have ye never 
read" that eighth Psalm? Yes, they had read it; but had 
never stopped to discover that that verse contained a principle 
which undermined their whole system of religion. " Out of 
the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected prajse." 
He had before driven out the wealthy abusers of the temple, 
that he might welcome to it the poor and suffering. Now he 
takes part with the children against the scribes. And never 
were children better employed ; and never children on earth 
more honored than these, by the Lord's commendation of 
them. Some suppose that David composed the eighth Psalm 



172 SERMONS. 

in reference to those acclamations of the women and chil- 
dren which greeted his triumph over Goliah, and which so 
provoked the envj of Saul. If so, there was a peculiar force 
in its being quoted on this occasion. Be that as it may, it 
presents to us the Saviour and the Gospel in a very inter- 
esting and instructive light, to hear from his lips this 
commendation of the praises and homage of children, by a 
quotation from the Old Testament. 

The first lesson we may draw from it is that 
I. The Gospel exhibits the condescension and 
GENTLENESS OF THE Saviour. — Parents, almost without 
exception, have loved their own children. But children, as a 
portion of the human family, have not generally been re- 
garded with much interest ; and particularly as religious 
beings, or in their spiritual relations. These priests and 
scribes probably supposed that children could not know 
enough to be religious ; and especially to form an accurate 
judgment of the claims of Jesus of Nazareth to be the Mes- 
siah. And never, I believe, except under the Jewish and the 
Christian dispensations, has any prominence been given to 
the religious culture of children, or much regard paid to 
their religious character and worship. The source of this 
indifference is the radical misapprehension of the nature of 
religion. While it contains a system of truth which requires 
the fullest exercise of the most cultivated mind for its com- 
prehension, it at the same time consists, as a practical prin- 
ciple of character and action, m feelings and purposes to 
which a little child is just as competent as a man ; and to 



CHILDHOOD PEAISING THE LORD. 173 

the existence and exercise of which, childhood presents fewer 
obstacles than manhood. 

Now, if we look at the systems of philosophy which men 
have invented, the arts and sciences which have given splen- 
dor to the states that possessed them, — if we look at the men 
who are aspiring to be the world's admiration, or the world's 
benefactors, — rarely shall we find them turning their atten- 
tion and their efforts to human nature in its period of 
weakness and ignorance ; much less glorying in their special 
adaptedness to children, and counting among their noblest 
trophies the children they have brought under the control of 
their systems. And even now you shall find the majority 
of men count, as of little worth, the manifestation of religious 
sentiments in children. Turn, then, from all this haughtiness 
of the human heart, all this loftiness of pretension, all this 
false dignity, and see the Son of God before and after his 
incarnation, in his treatment of children, and his estimate of 
their religious feelings and services. 

1. They are prominently noticed by their Creator and 
Saviour^ as objects of religious interest. — A casual reader 
might pass by this feature of the Saviour's character. But 
it presents itself with sufiicient frequency to make a strong 
impression, if we observe the cases. He not only compares 
those who believe in him to children, and his affection for 
them to a parent's love ; but he also rebukes with indignation 
those who thought it could be a matter of no importance that 
they should be brought to receive his blessing, declaring that 
there were already many such in the kingdom he came to estab- 
15* 



174 SERMONS. 

lish. He, who never performed an idle ceremony, spake an 
unmeaning word, nor pretended to anything he did not truly 
feel, took little children in his arms, and blessed them. And 
was there ever a sublimer spectacle than when Eedeeming 
Love there stood, enfolding in its tender embrace poor, sin- 
ful, sorrowing, perishing human nature in its feeblest estate ! 
He was not unobservant of their plays in the market-place, 
as he passed through their thronged streets ; and he made 
their games and their childish complainings the ground of 
illustrating the inconsistency of that generation of men, in 
their treatment of John and himself When he would rebuke 
the ambition and envy of his disciples, a little child was the 
text from which his sermon was preached ; and some of the 
very characteristics which distinguish childhood from man- 
hood were made the types of that piety he commended. And 
in the case we are considering, he accepted from children the 
praises which gave to him divine honors, when men counted 
his pretensions blasphemous. 

Notice, too, a still more impressive fact. When the Son 
of God was to become a man, he chose not to enter, like 
Adam, at once into the possession of manhood. 

2. He became a child. — I know not how to speak on the 
infinite condescension and goodness displayed in this fact. 
But it is one on which our minds may with profit dwell fre- 
quently and long. "Why," says Jeremy Taylor, "should 
Christ be an infant, but that infants should receive the crown 
of their age, the purification of their stained nature, the 
sanctification of their person, and the saving of their souls. 



CHILDHOOD PRAISING THE LORD. 175 

bj their infant Lord, and elder brother ? " " Being found 
in fashion as a man, he humbled himself." " Because the 
children had flesh and blood, he likewise took part of the 
same." Herein was love. Man begins his existence in a 
feebleness, a dependence, a subjection, in which he is inferior 
to plants and brutes. To that feebleness, dependence, and 
subjection, to all that inferiority, the Lord of glory stooped 
when he would save us. There are trials, sorrows, pains, 
and fears, incidental to childhood. These our Eedeemer 
would know by experience, and therefore ''he was born of 
woman," and "wrapped in swaddling-clothes;" was "subject 
to his parents," and " waxed in wisdom and in stature," to 
boyhood, and to manhood. Thus has he sanctified every 
position of our fallen nature, from its cradle to its grave. 
Thus has God exhibited his condescension, and the gentleness 
of his love, to a degree which will forever grow upon our 
admiring vision, but never be fully understood by us or any 
other creatures. 

His condescension and gentleness are further seen in 
3. The provisions made in the Gospel for the spiritual 
benefit of children. — Their position in the system of re- 
demption is really a prominent one. There are ordinances 
constructed specifically in reference to them. Under the 
Old Testament there was a sign and seal of their covenant 
relation to God ; and under the New Testament is baptism 
their right, having the same signification and end. The Chris- 
tian government of parents is one of God's chief ordinances 
for the education and discipline of children. Within the 



176 SERMONS. 

sacred enclosure of the family they are required to '' bring 
them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." And 
the obligations laid on parents are among the weightiest which 
men are called to bear. " I know Abraham," said Jehovah, 
when assigning a reason why he should be peculiarly blessed. 
'^ that he will command his household after him." And on Eli 
fell the heaviest judgments, because he had deprived his chil- 
dren of the benefits of a faithful parental government. Such 
is Jehovah's care of these tenderest years of man's earthly 
existence. And when the canon of Old Testament prophecy 
is to be closed, we are informed that the sign of the brighter 
day about to dawn at length upon this blighted earth is this : 
'• the hearts of the fathers shall be turned to the children." 
The introduction of that day will witness a new, profound, 
and enlightened Christian interest in the young. 

We further see that much of the instruction of the Scrip- 
tures is designed for children. " Secret things," says Moses, 
"belong to the Lord our God; but the things that are 
revealed, to us and our children, that we may do all the works 
of his law." The Israelites were enjoined to repeat to their 
children the history of God's providence, his laws, and his 
promises. And this was not to be an occasional exercise, for 
it is enjoined upon parents thus : " Thou shalt teach them 
diligently to thy children." And then they were enjoined 
to place them within reach of their children, and to make a 
large part of the family conversation turn on these sublime 
themes. 

We find, moreover, that special commands, counsels, warn- 



CHILDHOOD PRAISING THE LORD. 177 

ings, and encouragements, are addressed to children. One 
commandment out of the ten in the decalogue is peculiarly 
the child's commandment ; and frequently is it enjoined in a 
separate form, " Children, obey your parents in the Lord." 
The book of Proverbs may be called emphatically the young 
man's own book. With the tenderness of a human father, 
God there warns and remonstrates, and allures to wisdom's 
path, by the most beautiful and precious promises. 

There is also a place assigned to children in the worship 
of God. Under the Old Testament they were to be twice 
presented to God in their infancy. Then, at twelve years of 
age, the boys were led up to the great festival of the Pass- 
over, when they were to participate with their parents and 
countrymen ; and special pains were required in explain- 
ing to them the meaning of the ceremonies. When the 
enraptured Palmists is summoning the universal choir to cel- 
ebrate the praises of the Lord, he calls on •' old men and 
children " together. When Joel summons the sinful nation 
to assemble themselves with fasting and prayer, he thus 
issues his proclamation : " Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanc- 
tify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people, sanc- 
tify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the chil- 
dren, and those that suck the breasts." Why these little 
creatures yet without intelligence? Because ''out of the 
mouths of babes and sucklings thou perfectest praise." 

And, again : we find that special notice is taken of their 
piety ; and biographical sketches of children are frequent in 
the Bible. Moses' birth and early vicissitudes, Joseph's 



178 SERMONS. 

piety and trials, are sketched ■with the most entire simplicity ; 
and yet they have awakened, for more than three thousand 
years, the most lively interest in the minds of children of the 
Jewish and of every Christian nation. The early piety of 
Samuel, of David, of Obadiah, of Daniel, of John, and of 
Timothy, are all deemed worthy of mention or description in 
the sacred records. 

This feature of the Gospel appears in another form also. 

4. God's esteem for the j)iety and icorsJiip of children 
is particularly expressed. — We are struck with the man- 
ner in which they are noticed. There are at least three 
emphatic forms in which this is showed. The praises of little 
children are joined with the sublime chorus of creation. '• 
Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth ! 
who hast set thy glory above the heavens.'' Here, the 
Psalmist, full of the magnificent conceptions that he evi- 
dently possessed, even in that age, of the grandeur as well as 
beauty of the heavens, interrupts his description of the glory 
of the Creator as manifested in the heavens, and adds, " Out 
of the mouth of babes hast thou ordained strength." Then 
he resumes his theme: "When I consider the heavens, the 
work of thy fingers, what is man ! " Another emphatic 
passage is that in which it is mentioned, the Lord "rejoiced 
in spirit." I do not remember that it is said on any other 
occasion ; and that occasion the sacred narrator tlius describes : 
"In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank 
thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast 
bid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed 



CHILDHOOD PRAISING THE LORD. 179 

them unto babes ; even so, Father ; for so it seemed good in 
thy sight." I do not question that he uses the word " babes " 
here figuratively, as descriptive of his disciples. But this is 
the precise point I am aiming to show : that it is not the 
might of human intellect and extent of acquisition that God 
supremely regards in man as a religious being, but it is by 
retaining the simplicity of purpose, the self-distrust, the sense 
of dependence, the docility, the susceptibility and receptivity 
of right impressions, which distinguish childhood, that man is 
best fitted to serve God. So that whenever a child does exhibit 
piety, or sincerely praise God, his Creator, so far from despis- 
ing it, rejoices in it. It may seem to man a small thing that 
a little child bows his knees and calls on his heavenly Father, 
thanking him for giving him a good earthly father and 
mother, and asking for a good heart ; but he whose thoughts 
are as high above ours as the heavens above the earth, 
regards it not so. It may seem to man a matter of little 
moment that two or three children should meet and talk of 
Jesus and heaven, and praise him together; but Jesus 
regards it otherwise. 

The other emphatic notice of children's worship is in that 
expression in the eighth psalm : " Out of the mouths of 
babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength; " or (as 
rendered in the Septuagint, and by our Saviour) " perfected 
praise, because of thine enemies ; that thou mightest still the 
enemy and the avenger." Praise is, then, imperfect, unless 
children have a part in it. The praises of a family are not 
complete until the children join. There are reasons why 



180 SERMONS. 

they should take a part. God has blessed them ; and when 
the hymn rises from the assembled family, they should be 
heard too, uttering their thankful voices. The praises of the 
church are incomplete without the children ; for praise, like 
the music that utters it, may utter in solitude by melody the 
grateful and adoring feelings of one heart. But when many 
come to join, then you want not only the different register 
or scale of sounds adapted to age and sex, but you want also 
harmony, or the various parts. Some, indeed, think that it 
would be better if music had only unison, or one part ; but 
such persons cannot claim to have obtained that idea either 
from divinely appointed religious music, from the very capac- 
ities which the Creator has given to man as a musical being, 
or from a survey of that nature which perpetually praises 
God, blending ocean's solemn cadence with the rising scale 
of the winds, the even murmur of the pine-forest with the 
twitter of the swallow, and the canary-bird's trill. 

The public praises of Jehovah call for the blending of the 
graver bass with its appropriate movement, the tender or 
cheerful soprano, and the intermediate expressions of tenor 
and alto. It seems to be to just such a choral distribution 
that the Psalmist refers, when he says, "Both young men 
and maidens, old men and children, let them praise the name 
of the Lord." " To still the enemy and the avenger." What 
stronger illustration of this could be given than is found in 
this case of the hostile scribes rebuked by the hosannas of 
children ! — " Thou hast hid these things from the wise and 
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." The learned 



CHILDHOOD PRAISING THE LORD. 181 

could see no evidence that their Messiah, their Jehovah, had 
come to his temple, and they murmured and scowled ; but 
the children saw the God of salvation in that lowly form. — 
" This is our God, and we have waited for him." 

" Thou hast perfected praise." — Other things being equal, 
a child's praise is probably more complete than that of a man 
grown mature in unbelief before his conversion. 

From this gentler aspect of the Gospel, then, we may 
readily pass to another reflection derived from this passage. 

II. We have great encouragement to labor for 

THE spiritual GOOD OF CHILDREN. 

^ The Gospel of Jesus Christ, considered in two aspects, is 
full of majesty and vastness, and is infinitely removed from 
the feebleness and ignorance of man. Its revelations are of 
truths, which stand like pillars whose bases are in the depths 
of an infinite abyss, and whose capitals, at awful height, sus- 
tain the vast dome that spreads over the presence-chamber 
of the King of kings. No man, no angel, has measured their 
length or their diameter, has sounded to the place where they 
press their awful weight, or reached their empyreal summits. 
And it is also true that the Gospel contains the vast powers 
that are to mould and quicken society, after they shall first 
have dashed to pieces and crumbled to dust every mountain 
that obstructs Christ's universal dominion. Yet it remains 
true that not so many of the mighty, noble, or wise in worldly 
wisdom, as of the simple and unlearned, have received that 
Gospel with faith in it, as the wisdom and power of God 
unto salvation. 

16 



182 SERMONS. 

Its great truths are formed to the simplest apprehension 
of him who sincerely seeks God. They are addressed, at 
first, supremely to man's moral rather than his intellectual 
nature ; though, when once in the heart, they greatly quicken 
and nourish the understanding. The essential doctrines lie 
within the intellectual range of children, and are apt to find 
less formidable opposition in their moral nature than in that 
of adults. They can believe that a great Being made every- 
thing, — that it is a wicked heart in them that does not love 
him, and that becomes angry, is cruel, selfish, deceitful, dis- 
obedient. They can understand that Jesus was more than 
man or angels ; that he came to make us good, and to forgive 
us ; that God sustains us ; that he hears prayer ; that we 
must be sorry for our sins ; that we must believe that Christ 
will do as he says. These vital doctrines are addressed, not 
to the vigor of the intellect, but to the sense of littleness, 
want, dependence, guilt ; and to gratitude. 

The declaration made by our Lord, that "of such is the 
kingdom of heaven," was designed to be, and has been, the 
source of great encouragement to all who know the import- 
ance of an early subjection of the human will to God's 
authority. It means, both that the subjects of the new 
kingdom are actually taken from that rank of human beings, 
and that there are fewer embarrassments in a child's conver- 
sion than in that of an adult. The man is to unlearn, and 
undo, and get back ; to start from the position he occupied as 
a child. Neither the child nor the adult is by nature m that 



CHILDHOOD PRAISma THE LORD. 183 

kingdom ; but the latter must become " as a little child," that 
he may enter it. 

We may inquire how these children were led to praise the 
lowly Jesus thus ; and the almost unquestionable answer is, 
they had been taught it at home. Had it been the mere 
ebullition of childish feeling, and the imitation of older per- 
sons, our Saviour would not have noticed it with such honor ; 
but these children had probably had a reverence for this 
lowly but beneficent personage inspired at home ; and, now 
that the spark of gratitude in the persons healed fell on this 
tinder, it quickly kindled. Their reverence and sympathy 
were checked by no artificial notions, worldly plans, and 
selfish jealousies. 

" Mere knowledge makes us keen and cold. 

And cunning dwarfs the mind, 
As more and more the heart grows old 

With feelings base and blind. 
Our light is clearer, but our love is less. 
And few the hearts that we can bless." 

" Of such is the kingdom of heaven." In confirmation 
of this, we refer to what has now become a vast range of 
children's biography ; ridiculed by a pharisaic wisdom, and 
frowned upon by a self-inflated dignity, but watched with 
joy by angels' eyes. 

It was not in vain that Watts wrote hymns for children. 
Raikes, in founding the Sunday-school, performed a work 
more magnificent in its results than many most magnified by 
historians. 



184 SERMONS. 

They that look upon children as mere toys, have not the 
view that Christ had; for he regarded them as religious 
beings. They that are indifferent to the moral and religious 
impressions made by themselves and others on children have 
not learned of him. It is fearful to see how careless some 
parents are in this matter, and that under the light of the 
Gospel. Juvenal, a heathen poet, could say, in reference to 
parents' uttering wicked language in presence of their chil- 
dren, " Magna debetur puero reverentia," — "Great rever- 
ence is due to a child." And the sentiment has a profound 
meaning. Reverence is due to his responsibility and destiny, 
and to the influence he may hereafter exert on others. 



XI. 

FASTING. 



"E'tjis hinti can come fovti^ fig not^^tng tut prager anli fasting." — 
Mark 9: 29. 

"We shall never have exhausted the four gospels ; to say- 
nothing of the other sections of the holy writings ; but shall 
die, like Isaac Newton, comparing what he knew with what 
he did not know of God's works, and exclaiming, " To myself 
I seem to have been as a child playing on the sea-shore, while 
the immense ocean of truth lay unexplored before me." 

Here we see the glory of the Son of God contrasted with 
the misery of sinful man. On the one side, the Redeemer, 
speaking, from the fulness of his heart, on his great sacrifice 
for man's welfare ; on the other, a demon, tormenting and 
seeking to destroy a poor lad. On which feature of this 
scene could we ponder without a fresh interest, a new impulse 
of affection and gratitude ? 

But we pass by all the others at this time, to dwell on one 
remark, and on the circumstances which called it forth. In 
the absence of the Lord, the nine disciples were put to a 
severe proof, which manifested the weakness of their faith. 
One of Satan's angels had taken possession of a young man, 
16* 



186 SERMONS. 

and subjected him to horrible suffering, and often nearly 
destroyed him. The afflicted father, hearing the fame of 
Jesus, brought the boy to the disciples. They tried their 
skill upon the case, and found it insufficient ; and when the 
Lord himself came down to the foot of the mountain, the 
father approached him, and told his piteous story, remarking 
that the disciples had failed to cast out the demon. After 
the Saviour had healed the youth, and the disciples were left 
alone with the Master, they inquired why they had not been 
able to overcome the devil. Jesus replied (as you may see 
in Matt. 17) that it was on account of their unbelief; for 
' ■ this kind can come forth by nothing but prayer and fast- 
ing." Here was a demon of extraordinary strength, and he 
could be vanquished only by extraordinary prayer and fasting. 
Then our Saviour clearly teaches that 

Fasting is connected loith extraordinary spiritual 
attainments and achievements. — These disciples lacked 
the higher form of prayer, and its profounder spirit. There 
is a faith which removes mountains ; a prayer that unlocks 
heaven, and vanquishes the powers of hell. But Christ here 
shows that they are connected with fasting. 

I would, then, observe that 

I. We find this principle confirmed by the whole 

HISTORY OF FASTING, IN THE SCRIPTURES, AND IN THE 
CHURCH, FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA DOWNWARD. 

1. We turn^ first, to the Jewish church. — It is not 
affirmed whether the patriarchs knew anything of fasting as 
a religious service ; but Moses, in entering into the Mount, 



FASTING. 187 

to commune with God concerning the foundation of the Old 
Testament church, for forty days abstained from food, — of 
course by divine direction, and by miraculous aid. It is 
quite remarkable that the three persons who appeared on the 
Mount of Transfiguration had all performed this extraordi- 
nary fast of forty days. — Moses, Elijah, and Christ. 

If, now, we look at the several occasions on which it was 
employed by the devout members and eminent leaders of the 
Jewish church, we shall receive a strong impression that it 
has some connection with the higher exercises, attainments, 
and achievements, of piety, or with cases of especial appeal 
to the Most High. Sometimes it accompanies deep sorrow, 
whether that be mere natural grief, an humble recognition of 
the divine chastisement, or a deeply-penitential sorrow for 
sin. When Saul was buried, having been the first King of 
Israel, and having been slain ingloriously, the people assem- 
bled to recover his insulted corpse, and decently inter it. 
Then they fasted seven days. When David's child was dan- 
gerously ill, he lay on his face, and mourned, with fasting 
and prayer. The Psalmist, speaking of the afflictions brought 
on him by his enemies, says, " I humbled my soul with fast- 
ing." The great day of atonement, when the people brought 
their sins particularly to mind, was a day of fasting. In 
Joel's day, the people were called to assemble themselves, 
with fasting and weeping, to humble themselves before the 
judgments of God ; and after the return from the captivity, 
we find their leaders, Nehemiah and Ezra, on several occa- 
sions calling them to fast, as a sign and aid of repentance. 



188 SERMONS. 

Another use of it was to prepare the mind for specially 
intimate communion with God, or for very important service 
to the church. Moses performed that extraordinary fast 
when he was in that wonderful interview which produced the 
Mosaic institutions, and from which he came forth with the 
splendor of an angel radiating from his visage. When 
Daniel was about to receive a special communication rela- 
tive to the destiny of the church, he spent six weeks in one 
form of fasting. Ezra's fasts had reference too to great 
reformations ; and, in 1 Sam. 7 : 6, we find a fast to have 
been the first stage in one of those glorious revivals which 
refreshed and preserved the ancient church. 

Another occasion was the looking to God for especial help. 
When the eleven tribes were driven to the necessity of pun- 
ishing Benjamin, almost to extermination, they " went up, 
and came unto the house of God, and wept, and sat there 
before the Lord, and fasted that day until even." So, when 
Haman had procured the terrible decree that was to anni- 
hilate the Jewish people, Esther, with her maids of honor, 
gave themselves to fasting and prayer for the deliverance of 
their people ; and with what success, you remember. If we 
now follow the history of fasting into 

2. The times of Christy the apostles^ and the early 
Christiaji churchy we see it having the same solemn import 
and connections. — We begin with the great exemplar. Jesus 
did many things as a Jew, or a worshipper under the old 
theocracy, because that system was not yet abolished. In 
such matters he is not an example, only so far as the spirit 



FASTINa. 189 

of obedience and order is concerned. But this fasting was 
not Jewish. It obeyed no law of Moses. It was human. 
It was spiritual in the highest degree, and a most fitting 
opening to his glorious ministry, and his wondrous life as the 
Saviour of men. When the apostles entered on their great 
work, we find fasting an exercise accompanying the most 
solemn function of their ofiice, — the ordaining of preachers 
and pastors. Paul speaks of himself as being in fastings 
often. Sometimes it might be simply a consequence of his 
voluntary poverty, and the violence of opposition which he 
encountered. But he says that he and his fellow-ministers 
approved themselves to men by their fastings, among other 
things. 

And, in accordance with this, there are two remarks which 
show the permanence of this exercise in the church. When 
the Pharisees inquire why Christ's disciples were not found 
fasting like John's, the Lord replied that the friends of the 
bridegroom were so joyous in his society that fasting would 
not be an appropriate expression of their feelings. But, he 
continues, the bridegroom will be taken away ; the church 
is to pass through dark days, severe trials, dangerous service, 
and difficult work ; then fasting will be appropriate to her cir- 
cumstances and her feelings. And Paul makes such allusion 
to fasting in his instructions to the Corinthians, as shows 
that he regarded it as a permanent institution in the 
church. 

After the apostolic times, the church preserved fasting; 
and, at length, when aiming to fix a uniform observance of 



190 SERMONS. 

sacred seasons, she set apart the time supposed to be the 
same as that of our Saviour's fast and temptation in the 
•wilderness, to be solemnized with the anniversary exercise of 
abstinence. And I believe all her eminent men, of every 
communion, have been distinguished for this exercise. I do 
not remember any of any age who considered it as obsolete 
or useless. Down to the time of the Reformation, no true 
Christian any more thought of neglecting fasting than 
prayer. After the Reformation we find two classes : those 
who chose to confound the Romish abuse with the institu- 
tion itself, and so despised it : and those who practised it in 
primitive simplicity. And I repeat my impression that the 
men most eminent for piety, in every branch of the Protest- 
ant church, used this means of grace. What, then, is 

II. The nature of fasting as a religious exercise ? 

1. It is a spijitual seiwice. — There is, indeed, an exter- 
nal part, like kneeling and speaking in prayer, which are 
very important ; and, in some cases, indispensable. Yet in 
both cases we must carefully distinguish the essential from 
the circumstantial ; the soul from the body. Externally it 
admits of several degrees, which are referred entirely to the 
judgment and conscience of each individual. There is a fast- 
ing which may be exercised daily ; a keeping one's self from 
yielding too far to the pleasures of the table. There is an 
abstinence like Daniel's, for a season, from food as a source 
of pleasure, using only what will barely sustain life and 
Btrenorth. Then there is a total abstinence from all food and 

o 

drinks for a certain time. The rule here is one to be drawn 



FASTING. 191 

up conjointly by a heart desiring the greatest spiritual good, 
and a judgment estimating all the facts of the case. Let the 
fast be so strict as to bend in no degree to the love of food ; 
so lenient as not to injure health. 

But, to make mere abstinence from food an end, is a 
senseless mockery, more worthy of a pagan than a Christian. 
"Is it such a fast that I have chosen, saith the Lord? a 
day for a man to afflict his soul ? " A little different arrange- 
ment of the words would have made the sense more obvious, 
namely, " Is this the fasting or day for soul-humbling that 
I have chosen ; the mere bowing down of the head like a 
bulrush, and spreading sackcloth and ashes under him?" 
No. He says : I require you to fast in spirit ; to cease from 
your injustice and cruelty. So that the abstinence from 
food, more or less rigid, is but a means to a spiritual end. 
It may often, indeed, be bodily beneficial to omit a meal, 
even in good health ; but that is not a religious service, it is a 
medical regimen. 

2. Fasting is in no way a meritorious service^ nor a 
magical instrument. — The Romish church has filled the 
world with delusions on this subject ; making its own mem- 
bers dupes, and other men mockers and sceptics. The whole 
value and efficacy of it depends upon the other points which 
we will now consider. 

3. It is the expression of an earnest religious pinpose. 
— The heart of him who fasts aright is, at the time, peculiarly 
concentrated. Some view of sin, some danger, some want, 
some pressure of responsibility, some momentous service for 



192 SERMONS. 

God and the church about to be entered upon, some renewed 
earnestness in seeking the presence of the Most High, are 
the occasions of fasting described in Scripture, and in sacred 
biography. These are the elements of it. The heart is 
fixed on one great object, TN'ith peculiar earnestness of desire. 
Moses did not fast for the sake of laying up a store of merit 
for himself, or for some other person. The founding of 
God's church ; the promulgation of Jehovah's law ; the open- 
ing of a new stage in the work of redemption ; these were 
the mighty charges lying on his soul. And he fasted, as a 
natural means of aiding his self-abasement and his spiritu- 
ality of mind. So it was in every recorded case ; something 
of peculiar importance peculiarly occupied the mind. And 
individuals or churches appointing fasts ought to see to it 
that they have some distinct and great object before them in 
the service, whether it be of repentance, humiliation under 
chastisement, seeking increase of graces, closer communion 
with God, or greater usefulness, the averting of some ca- 
lamity, the enlargement and sanctification of the church. 
This earnestness of purpose is seen not only in being fixed 
on a definite object; but also in the consecration of time and 
person to that specific object. That is an eminent advantage. 
Our life is wasted with vague intentions and scattered labors ; 
our consciences are cheated with good resolutions that we 
never find time to execute. A fast is a period specifically 
devoted to one object ; and that, for the time, the most import- 
ant to which that person can attend. By making the object 
definite, the mind is concentrated, clear, calm, and strong. 



FASTING. 193 

Bj fixing the purpose, the character is rendered firm. By 
executing it, the conscience assumes its proper ascendency, 
and something definite is attained and accomplished. 

There is gain in another direction by this setting apart 
time to accomplish a definite object. Hindrances are re- 
moved. There is some reason why every Christian does not 
grow in each feature of the divine image — why he does not 
execute his good purposes ; there is some hindrance which, 
for want of a fixed attention, he may never have seen, or, for 
want of a fixed purpose, he may never have taken out of the 
way. Now he sets his heart earnestly on a great object. 
And the hindrances show themselves distinctly, and are taken 
in hand resolutely. This mere setting apart a specific season 
to accomplish a specific spiritual result, is like the case of a 
traveller who had always been walking sideways or backward 
toward the town he desired to visit. If he came against a post, 
he could not tell what it was, nor how to avoid it, his eyes not 
being in the right dii^ection. Now he turns his face toward 
the city, and turns off his attention from diverting objects 
which heretofore were most in his thoughts. Now he knows 
whether the hindrance is a post or a fence, a rock or a hill, 
and he finds a way of avoiding it. A season of fasting, 
moreover, 

4. Is consonant with pecuUai^ degrees of repentance. — 
Repentance includes a distinct contemplation of our personal 
sins. To that, such a season is very favorable. It includes 
sorrow for sin. Indeed, the natural effect of sorrow is to 
diminish the appetite for food. When Saul was sore dis- 
17 



194 SERMONS. 

tressed, because the Philistines made war on him, and God 
had abandoned him, it is recorded, " He had eaten no bread, 
all the day, nor all the night." And the ship's company in 
which Paul was, "when no small tempest lay upon them, 
and all hope that they should be saved was taken away, con- 
tinued fasting for fourteen days." Saul of Tarsus, when 
first awakened to the sense of his sins, being led blind into 
Damascus, ''was three days without sight, and neither did 
eat nor drink." The Ninevites, knowing nothing of God 
but his indignation at their wickedness, humbled themselves 
at the call of his prophet, and fasted in their sorrow. 

There is also in repentance a congeniality with fasting, 
because both express a kind of holy revenge against sin. Past 
ingratitude for God's goodness, a sensual attachment to his 
gifts, a perversion of them to idolatry and pride and selfish- 
ness, makes it suitable sometimes to say to the body, "There, 
thou shalt sufier now this privation, as a chastisement; " and 
to sin, "Thou hast conquered me by thy blandishments ; now 
I will hold thee at bay through these bodily appetites, which 
are thy favorite instruments." Kepentance is also the soul 
breaking itself loose from the world. And there is an appro- 
priateness in setting apart a time in which the soul shall have 
no more to do with the material world than absolute neces- 
sity requires. "I keep my body under," said an eminent 
Christian hero. 

5. Fasting accords with a season set apart for pecu- 
liar efforts to attain to personal holiness. — To some per- 
sons, I am aware, the physical part of fasting is not peculiarly 



FASTING. 195 

difficult. But, take it in its general feature, it is as an 
expression of suffering, more or less. And as such it is a 
link in a chain, a stage on the road toward holiness, to him 
who rightly employs it. The fathers called it "the nour- 
isher of prayer, the restraint of lust, the wings of the soul, 
the diet of angels, the instrument of humility and self-denial, 
the purifier of the spirit." And St. Basil remarks, that "The 
paleness and meagreness of visage, in great mortifiers of self, 
is the mark in the forehead to which Ezekiel alludes." Sin, 
we know, is to be conquered, as it was atoned for, by suffering. 
God is calling us to a complete self-conquest. And self-denial 
is a feature of the Gospel system, prominent and fundamental. 
There is too a necessity that we make vigorous attacks on the 
strongholds of sin and Satan within us. We are sometimes 
like the King of Israel sending an army to suppress the 
rebellion. And, while making all this parade of sternness, 
he issues this order concerning the chief and soul of the con- 
spiracy: " Deal gently, for my sake, with the young man, 
even with Absalom." A fast, to be genuine, presupposes 
that, although sin remains in the heart, the love of it is gone. 
In part, our Saviour's fasting was not like ours. He had 
no sins to conquer. But he had a human nature to elevate 
spiritually. Who knows how much that human nature 
needed to be raised above its native state, to carry it to its 
perfection ? The Captain of our salvation was " made perfect 
through suffering." The critics say it was an official perfec- 
tion. It was that, and perhaps more. As his human nature 
admitted of growth in quantity, it might also in quality, 



196 SERMONS. 

without derogating from its purity. His long fast may have 
had reference to this end. It was, doubtless, a means which 
his holy human nature needed for the highest communion 
with the Godhead, as well as to be an example to his church ; 
showing his followers that the road to high attainments and 
results is through suffering and self-abasement. Then, says 
one, "let us follow Christ, though at a distance; for, if we 
may but touch the hem of his garment by the small begin- 
nings of a faithful imitation, we shall find a virtue coming 
out from him, to the curing of the malady of sin and of its 
bloody issue." 

6. Fasting agrees^ too^ with the peculiar exercise of 
love to Christ. — He peculiarly desires that we remember 
his sufferings. "Do this in remembrance of me." His 
fasting was a part of his suffering, and a part in which we 
can imitate and share with him. His divine nature enabled 
him to bear suffering, but it did not diminish, probably in- 
creased, his sensibility to it. This we ought to study at 
every point of its manifestation, especially as it is so opposed 
to all our natural tendencies. We must, by any and all 
means, become serious in our apprehension of the evil of sin. 
and the power of Satan. We must learn that the plague is 
deep and malignant; that there is a "kind" which will hold 
their position long. Jesus fasted and wept, watched, agonized, 
and prayed, in reference to them. We must be baptized 
with his baptism, and drink of his cup. There is thus 

7. A peculiar fitness in making a fast to accompany 
our peculiar onsets on Satan's kingdom. — The first thing 



FASTING. 197 

we need, in waging the battles of the Lord, is to believe that 
there are any battles to fight : that Satan and his demons 
are realities. Then we need to know that they are too formi- 
dable for lis ; and yet that they are not invincible. This kind 
can be driven forth, but it must be "by fasting and prayer." 
We can become the organs of the Spirit of God by fasting 
and prayer. If Satan is mighty in resisting, we can ,be 
" strong in the power of the Lord, and of his might." We 
are first ourselves to break from all allegiance to him. And 
fasting is one means of eifecting that. Eating was the first 
outward act by which man symbolized and expressed his 
allegiance to Satan. And there seems to be a peculiar fit- 
ness in his sometimes recalling that fact, and refusing to eat 
for a season. Satan, in his great attack on our Lord, appears 
to have made the common mistake about the effect of fasting. 
If it were merely a bodily exercise, it would expose men to 
his temptations. But, when used as a spiritual exercise, he 
finds himself weak before the little ones of Christ. He came 
to the king himself at the end of the fast, as the most favor- 
able time for his attack. But he found the spirit prepared 
for him, in whatever condition the body may have then been. 
We must look to God in our attacks on Satan. And 
religious fasting is an acceptable service. He accepted it of 
Moses and Nehemiah, of Jesus and of the apostles. And 
we may suppose that they who attack the strongest demons 
will be most rewarded. The essence of this exercise, as a 
service to God, lies in the intention to seek and serve him 
in an especial manner, and to make a season unusually holy, 
17=^ 



198 SERMONS. 

by separating one's self, as far as is possible and proper, from 
all earthly interests and enjoyments. Here is its chief 
value, in this purpose and the earnestness of it. Without 
that, the day is gloomy, and full of headache and discourage- 
ment ; with it, the day is ethereal, heavenly. It is very 
evident, too, from the case before us in the text, that we may 
fast and pray in reference to the good of others, as well as 
ourselves. 

We see how the church is to become efficient. — Her at- 
tainments are low and limited, and so are her achievements ; 
because her aims are low, her faith weak, her self-denial a 
name. She must aim higher, and her trust must be alone in 
God. How vain is much of her hope ! Fine buildings, ar- 
chitecture, the talents of her preachers, wealth accumulating 
in her coffers, the favor of the wealthy, numbers and worldly 
influence, — to these multitudes are looking. But the kind 
that has possession of the world now '' cometh not out " by 
any nor all of these. We must go downward rather than 
upward. We must see what kind of meetings we have when 
fasting and praying are the work in hand, to judge of our 
real power and progress. 

And is there now no call for private and social fasting, 
to be accompanied with peculiarly earnest prayer ? Is not 
Satan in greatest power when his power is least dreaded ? 
Are there not demons of pride, and avarice, and lust, and 
unbelief, that will go out by no other means now, as in the 
former days ? 



XII. 

PAUL'S REVIEW OP HIS LIFE. 



"5 am nobj reatia to 6e oUtxe'a, anti tf)e time of mg tieparturc is at 

ijanti. i fiabe fougi^t a gooU figtt, 2 $a&E ftntsfjeti mg courgf, 

5 $a&e ftept tfje fattfj: fjenccfortfj tfjere is laiti up for me a crotntt 

of rtgfjtcousncss, ixifjiclj tf)e ILorti, ti&e rigfjteous ^utjge, gf)all gffe* 

.mc at tfjat bag."— 2 Tim. 4: 6—8. 

Thus Paul wrote to Timothy, about thirty years after he 
was converted. He had begun his new course, clear in his per- 
ceptions of the work to be done, prompt and firm in his purpose 
to do it ; and we now look with deep interest to the end of it. 
The review of one's life is always a serious matter, if hon- 
estly performed. But here is a review of more than ordi- 
nary interest. It is made by a man of extraordinary piety 
and good sense ; a man eminently distinguished of Heaven 
in the mode of his conversion, in the office conferred on him, 
and in the blessing crowning his labors ; a man now on the 
isthmus between his labors and their issues in eternity ; a 
man relating his experience, and uttering his hopes, under 
the guidance of inspiration. 

He informs us that 

I. The past filled him with satisfaction. — It was 



200 SERMONS. 

not that he had never been a transgressor of God's law, or 
had ever perfectly conformed to its requirements ; but the 
main current of his life since his conversion, the fixed pur- 
pose of his heart, the influence he had exerted on human 
thought, feeling, character, and destiny, gave him great satis- 
faction. He views his life under three aspects : 

1. He had been a warrior. — And his contest was with 
no phantom or abstraction ; not with a mere principle of 
evil, employed without will or intelligence, but with a 
real enemy. Paul evidently acted continually under the 
impression that he was in an enemy's country, — that he 
was watched by an imisible foe, resisted by a being mightier 
than priest or prince. " We wrestle not," he says, " against 
flesh and blood, but against principalities, and powers, and 
spiritual wickednesses in high places." He recognized a 
terrible unity in sin, — an energy and ubiquity which are 
angelic. He considered himself an ofiicer in an army which 
has regiments contending in battle-fields far away from this 
earth. He was not chief in this war, though chief in the 
visible army. The Captain under whom he fought was not 
seen on earth, but King in heaven. The captain with whom 
he contCT"^ he called, on account of his invisible presence, 
" Prince of the power of the air." 

Paul's enemy was God's enemy. He had no quan-els of 
ambition, or revenge, or covetousness, or pride, to settle. 
His eye was fixed on the prince who led the revolt in heaven, 
and had brought it down to earth. Against him Paul pro- 
claimed an open and uncompromising war, — a war of exter- 



PAUL'S REVIEW OF HIS LIFE. 201 

mination ; and he extended it to everything that enlisted 
under Satan. Hence it began in his own heart, against the 
traitors long entertained there ; and with them he proclaimed 
an unrelenting war. Every thought must be brought into 
captivity to Christ, with every affection, every purpose, and 
power of the soul. "Whatever, then, there was in Saul of pride 
or passion, of selfishness or worldliness, must find from Paul 
no favor nor leniency ; and whatever system of philosophy 
or religion, whatever institution or person, was engaged to 
destroy the kingdom of his Lord, to prevent its supremacy 
in the world, or to rival the glory of Christ, he contended 
with in the same spirit. Read, in the Acts of the Apostles, 
and Paul's Epistles, how constantly he was maintaining tJie 
truth of the Gospel, the purity of the church, and the faith 
of believers, in opposition to the powerful attacks of wicked 
men. He reckoned those who persecuted him in the same class 
with the men who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets. 
This, then, made it a good fight. It was a resistance only to 
evil ; a defence only of righteousness and truth ; a contest 
for the glory of God, and the good of men. It was a good 
fight, too, in its mode and spirit. He displayed in it eminent 
courage, bearding the lion in his den. His chief labors were 
in the great cities of the Roman empire ; and it is most 
interesting to see this little, feeble man drawing his blade 
upon the champions of every false system of thought, and 
every institution in which Satan was intrenched. Men have 
gazed with admiration on Napoleon, rushing from France to 
Italy, to Egypt, to Germany, to Spain, to Russia; strug- 



202 SERMONS. 

gling, and that successfully, against the mighty powers of the 
continent. But there was one mightier whom he never at- 
tacked. He never besieged a fortress in England, and yet 
England contained the seat of the power which could defeat all 
his plans. But Paul, as a captain, had a higher kind of ubi- 
quity than this wonderful man. He vanquished Judaism in 
Jerusalem. He met the idolatry of Grecian Asia at Ephesus. 
He penetrated Corinth, the stronghold of pagan luxury. He 
met the philosophy of Greece in Athens, and the whole power 
of paganism at Rome, its political capital. No mighty army 
executed his plans, and defended his person. No enthusiastic 
nation sustained him. He knew and contended with every 
heresiarch that troubled the church. He had no fear of 
priest or proconsul, — of a Jewish mob, or a Roman 
emperor. He counted not his life dear to him. If the 
earthly hero equalled him there, yet he sinks into littleness 
by his ambition. True heroism consists in reaching that 
point of courage by absorption in a public interest greater 
than the personal interest he jeopards. But his courage 
was not rash, for he was wonderfully patient. He could wait 
for results and deliverances. His advice to Timothy was 
copied from his own life : " Thou, therefore, endure hardness 
as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." " I suffer trouble as an 
evil-doer, even unto bonds ; but the word of God is not 
bound. Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sake." 
When suffering could promote the cause, he suffered cheer- 
fully; when action was w^anted, he was among the most 
active. Without this disregard to self, no one can fight the 



PAUL'S REVIEW OF HIS LIFE. 203 

good fight. They will be either remiss when activity is 
demanded, or impetuous when patience is strength, and suf- 
fering is victory. But so Paul fought, sometimes in earnest 
debate, sometimes in fervent preaching; quite as often in 
meek endurance, patient suffering, and solitary prayer. 

He fought, therefore, with the right weapons ; his reliance 
was mainly on these — the truth of the Gospel, the power 
of example, the prayer of faith. Never did man more scru- 
pulously obey the rules of this holy war, or more skilfully 
employ these holy weapons. He showed men how to be 
Christians. He fought against their prejudices by his life ; 
he attacked their consciences with the Gospel, which he 
calls " the sword of the Spirit." And then he turned back 
to him with whom is the residue of the Spirit, to bring 
down that mighty power of God which gives the victory. 
This was his good fight ; not a contest against right, 
freedom, or innocence ; not conducted selfishly nor cru- 
elly; not with weapons of death; but against falsehood, 
sin, and Satan ; not for a party, a name, a man, a coun- 
try ; but for God, for eternal principles. He found the for- 
tresses of Satan at Thessalonica, at Jerusalem, at Philippi, 
at Corinth, at Athens, at Rome. He entered them all, like 
David meeting Goliah, in the strength of Israel's God. Idols 
trembled, and priests turned pale before him. His was a 
good fight. No hero of earth had ever such right to exult 
in the review of his conflicts and his victories. 

Thus was Paul a warrior ; and yet, while so much of his 
life might be embraced under that figure, it was not all. 



204 SERMONS. 

2. He had been a racer ^ also. — The Greeks were a 
remarkable people ; brought bj Providence on the stage of 
action to introduce a new phase of civilization, and a new 
development of the human faculties. Thej gave great prom- 
inence to the education of the body ; associating with it the 
religious sentiments, the social and patriotic feelings, and the 
highest intellectual exercises and enjoyments. Their games 
were among the mightiest instruments of their national cul- 
tivation. Their periodical recurrence moved the enthusiasm 
of the Grecian states and colonies, and drew admiring spec- 
tators from remote parts of the earth. They had none of 
the low associations of our modern games, nor all of the 
demoralizing tendency of modern theatres. They were, 
therefore, most appropriate to the illustration of those lofty 
aspirings and efforts to which the Gospel calls men. "I 
have finished my race," says Paul. "I entered the course 
thirty years ago ; and now the goal has come in sight ; a 
few more steps, and I shall seize the prize." 

What was the goal ? It was, to attain and accomplish the 
highest ends man can seek ; the highest personal perfection 
consistent with being on earth ; attaining, as he styles it, " to 
the resurrection of the dead;" the exalting Christ among 
men ; the leading men to him ; the confirmation of the 
churches in their faith; the leaving behind him writmgs 
which should be the means of glorifying God, edifying his 
people, and converting men, to the end of time. He had 
aimed at these achievements ; and, by the grace of God, he 
had accomplished them. It was a vast work ; but it was now 



205 



finished. He had been intensely active ; but the time of 
rest was now come. He had started, Saul the young, im- 
petuous, bold, and brave ; now he closes his course, Paul the 
aged, calm, gentle, and hopeful. It is the same spirit, and a 
noble spirit, that acts in two such opposite ways ; making its 
possessor all enthusiasm and energy when work is to be done, 
all quietness and composure when suiFering is to be borne ; 
that is the true spirit that knows how to work, and how to 
rest; how to do, and how to endure; how to live, and how to die. 
What is this spirit ? It finds the course it is to run, the 
end it is to seek, the principles on which it is to act. Many 
act from impulse, custom, and slavish imitation, all their 
lives. If they run a race, it is not their own ; they do not 
seek, at the right sources, what they were made for. Every 
one has an individual constitution entirely peculiar, and 
a^pted to particular ends. By this. Providence has fitted 
that person to attain to personal perfection, to glorify God, 
and to benefit the world in a particular way. And no one 
finds that way without a spirit of unreserved consecration ; a 
renouncement of all selfish and worldly ends ; an honest and 
earnest proposal of the inquiry which Saul presented to him 
who alone can answer it, " Lord, what wilt thou have me to 
do?" "I run," says Paul, "not as uncertainly." The 
ends I am seeking are those which my Creator sought in giv- 
ing me being ; those my Redeemer sought in purchasing me 
with his precious blood. I have chosen them in view of 
God's will, and of their own intrinsic importance. They are 
the principles that lie at the basis of my life. I respect 
18 



206 SERMONS. 

them, I reverence them, I make everything bend to them. 
Besides this distinct election of the right objects to live for, 
or the right motives of action, there is a firmness and steadi- 
ness of will or purpose -which is implied in a successful 
finishing this course. He who thus finishes his course is 
not governed by his feelings or his frames. Depressed or 
cheerful, well or ill, in favor or out of favor, he presses 
toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God ; 
laying aside every weight, he runs with patience. And 
then there is another rule of the sacred Olympics : not only- 
must the athlete keep his body under, but he must look to 
Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. ''This is the 
victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." But 
faith rests, as its ultimate exercise, in the almighty Saviour. 
" Not I," says Paul, " but the grace of God, which was 
with me. What I am, I am by the grace of God." He 
prays for the Ephesians, that Christ may dwell in their 
hearts by faith. 

He then gives us another view of his life, under the figure 
of a trusteeship or stewardship. 

3. He had been a steward. — His life presented in this 
aspect a trust discharged. " I have kept the faith." 

A trust implies two parties : one intrusting, the other 
receiving the deposit, or charge. Who, then, committed to 
Paul the sacred interest he had so faithfully kept ? The 
answer is found in many passages. When Saul yet lay 
blind in a house in Damascus, the Lord Jesus said to Ana- 
nias, concerning him, "He is a chosen vessel unto me, to 



PAUL'S REVIEW OP HIS LIFE. 207 

bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the chil- 
dren of Israel." He speaks of his ministry thus: ''The 
ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify 
the Gospel of the grace of God." When he was stricken to 
the earth, on the road to Damascus, he cries to Jesus, "Lord, 
what wilt thou have me do ? " He calls himself a ser- 
vant of Jesus Christ, an apostle, missionary, or ambassador. 
"We are ambassadors for Christ." He, therefore, regarded 
himself as intrusted by the Lord Jesus with a treasure that 
he must most sacredly guard ; and that treasure was the Gos- 
pel. How he understood the Gospel, we can learn in the 
fullest manner from the Scriptures. We have, besides 
many casual remarks, no less than five of his sermons 
reported at greater or less length, and fourteen letters or 
essays from his hands ; and the burden of them all is the 
theme with which he commenced his ministry in Damascus, 
preaching Christ, that he is the Son of God; "opening and 
alleging from the Scriptures that Christ must have suffered 
and risen again from the dead;" "testifying repentance 
toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus." 

From Christ he received it in charge to make men know 
what he had done to save them, and what they must do 
that he might save them. — " We preach not ourselves, 
but Christ Jesus the Lord." The great facts and principles 
of redemption were committed to him, to believe them, to 
manifest their power in his own experience, to preach them 
to mankind, and commit them to writing. He was thus to 



208 SERMONS. 

present to men, and to perpetuate to all future generations, 
the doctrines, practice, and spirit, of the Gospel. 

How did he discharge that trust ? Faithfully. In regard 
to his own soul, he knew that he, as a man, must take the 
same care of it as the obscurest believer, of his. His talents, 
his apostleship, would not make any less necessity for vigi- 
lance and care. Hence, we find many evidences of his minute 
fidelity as a Christian. "I keep my body under," he says. 
*' Forgetting the things which are behind, I count not my- 
self to have attained." To notice only one particular : he 
was peculiarly exposed to pride, from his position and his 
success. But he could call the Ephesian pastors to witness, 
" Ye know, from the first day that I came into Asia, after 
what manner I have been among you at all seasons ; serving 
the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears and 
temptations which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews." 
And thus it was in regard to every grace of the spirit ; he had 
preserved them with great vigilance and prayerfulness. " I 
have kept the faith ; " I have not swerved from the doctrine, 
the precept, or the spirit, of the Gospel of my Lord. 

He had been a faithful guardian, likewise, of the truth. 
Scarcely had he received the truth, before he began to pro- 
claim it in Damascus. He preached the crucified one in the 
synagogues, that he is the Son of God. And he " increased 
in strength, confounding the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, 
proving that this is very Christ ; " probably even then wield- 
ing some of those powerful arguments which are found in the 
epistles to the Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews. 



PAUL'S REVIEW OF HIS LIFE. 209 

But this required a great degree of self-denial. He was 
told that he could do this work only through great suffering. 
And, from the very opening of his ministry, he began to 
drink of his Master's cup, and share his baptism. From first 
to last, he remained in the state of mind expressed in the 
text : " I am ready to be offered." '' Since truth requires 
her champion to be a martyr, I have laid myself on the 
altar, and I am ready to have the axe descend upon the vic- 
tim. Death, tortures, contempt, in Christ's behalf, have no 
terrors to me. I count not my life dear to me, so that I 
might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I 
have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the 
grace of God." 

He had other men's souls in trust. The faith he kept was 
to save them ; and he spared no labor, nor shunned any dan- 
ger, that he might communicate to them the precious boon. 
He kept the faith ; not in mere guardianship, but with the 
fidelity of a guardian intrusted with property to be wisely 
applied to the good of his wards. 

He had especially the church in trust. The faith or Gos- 
pel he held for her benefit. For her sake he defended it 
against all invaders. He bore the reproach to which it was 
subject; he watched over the whole body; for, "the care of 
all the churches " came on him ; and, at the same time, he 
cared for the weakest and obscurest of the flock. To keep 
the faith, or the truth, and to administer it in due season to 
every man and every church, was his commission ; and well 
18* 



210 SERMONS. 

might he say, ''I have kept the faith." And from this 
review of his life he looks forward to 

II. A FUTURE FILLED WITH BLESSEDNESS. 

He had honored his Redeemer, and he knew that Christ 
would honor him. He looked for '*a crown." It has been 
a common thing in the world's history to contend for a crown. 
The Christian hero here stands on the level of the earthly 
hero. But, when we come to compare the nature of these 
respective crowns, the character of their conflicts, and the 
umpires to whom the warriors look, the Christian rises to an 
elevation infinitely above the earthly hero. The former 
fights the good fight of faith ; pure in its motive, pure in all 
its processes, blessed in all its results. He looks for a crown 
of righteousness, or the appropriate reward of righteous 
actions springing from righteous principles ; and he looks, 
not to a frantic mob, or an erring mortal, but to the Lord, the 
Judge, the Righteous. There is nothing selfish in the war, 
the victory, nor the coronation. The conquered are all to be 
crowned with their Conqueror ; and " all them also that love 
his appearing." That day, that glorious day, when every 
faithful warrior, racer, and steward, will be honored and 
rewarded, Paul had then full in view. 



To every man there must be a specific ivork assigned. 
— Nothing can be made in vain by a wise Creator. Paul's 
work may be more vast and magnificent than yours or mine, 
but more real or distinct it cannot be. Like Paul, each of 
us has a battle to fight, a race to run, a trust to discharge. 



PAUL'S REVIEW OF HIS LIFE. 211 

And yet there is a variety in the details as great as the other 
personal varieties which distinguish us. All have an enemy 
to contend with. If we do not believe in his existence, of 
course he gains, by that alone, an immense advantage. Paul 
was ignorant neither of him "nor his devices." He has 
intrenchments in our hearts, and allies in our avocations, 
our friends, our amusements. We need courage, as Paul 
did, or we never shall overcome. We need to put on the 
whole armor of God, that we may withstand his assaults ; 
and faith, that we may gain the victory. In some there will 
be sore conflicts with doubts ; some, with passions ; some, 
with sluggishness ; some, with social influences ; some, with 
business-snares ; some, with pride ; and some, with the love 
of money, enterprise, or power. 

Every one must resist Satan. There is also a race set 
before each of us. The goal to which we are to run is an 
end worthy of mean's highest affections, utmost energy, and 
of heaven's utmost aid. Our catechism expresses it in one 
good form : " The chief end of man is to glorify God, and to 
enjoy him forever." Having chosen these ends to pursue, 
then we need energy and perseverance, like Paul's, in the 
pursuit of them. 

Each of us has a trust committed to him. No other 
treasure can be so precious, no responsibility can be greater. 
Here each one is to be faithful. 

But it is only in these general features that our duties and 
responsibilities can agree. There is an infinite variety in 
the detail. Nothing can be more personal and peculiar 



212 SERMONS. 

than duty. And if we look through the biographies of the 
Bible, we shall be struck with the diversity of forms which 
duty takes. Adam had just one simple negative prescription, 
not to eat that fruit. Abel had to serve God unto martyr- 
dom. Noah was placed where social influences were to be 
resisted. Enoch's trust was to warn a wicked world. Abra- 
ham's was to magnify faith under the severest tests. Job's 
was to illustrate patience. Jacob was to try the efiBcacy of 
prayer. Moses had a vast and complicate work to perform, 
of governing the church. And so it is through the Old and 
New Testaments. No two are placed in the same circum- 
stances. And they accomplished their work best who best 
understood what they had to do, and who gave themselves 
fully to it. 

What must any one, then, think of himself, who has no 
warfare with spiritual foes, no heavenly race to run, no trust 
from Christ ? Surely he makes his life a blank, he neglects 
momentous trusts, and incurs terrible guilt. 

There is a crown of righteousness for the faithful 
soldier^ racer ^ and steward. — God has bound the present 
and the future together, and in this form. The soul out of 
Christ remains forever under the bondage of sin. The soul 
in Christ becomes in the end perfect. Degrees of fidelity to 
Christ determine the degree of future blessedness. Ancient 
nations bestowed various sorts of garlands, diadems, and 
crowns, on their victorious generals. Under this imagery 
Paul describes the blessedness he was anticipating. He had 
called his warfare a good fight. So he calls his coronation a 



213 



righteous one. His labors and sacrifices were in the cause 
of righteousness ; and they would be acknowledged and re- 
warded by a righteous judge, so that none could challenge 
his right to receive them. It will not be demanded by justice 
that our poor sacrifices receive any reward. But it will be 
in strict accordance with justice that they be rewarded for 
Christ's sake. He that has fought God's enemies with 
courage shall be honored as a conqueror. He that has run 
God's appointed race shall receive the prize. The faithful 
steward, whose pound hath gained ten, shall be made ruler 
over ten cities. Whatever we have sacrificed or suffered for 
the Lord, he will recognize and recompense. Paul "became 
a fool " by opposing the wisdom of the world ; his wisdom in 
this will there be acknowledged. He humbled himself here ; 
he shall be exalted there. He gave up riches here ; he shall 
have the wealth of heaven. And this crown, he says, will 
be shared by all who love the Lord's appearing. Ambition, 
envy, and selfishness, are to be slain by the cross of Christ. 
Each one will be conscious of the peculiar blessings he 
receives ; but it will excite neither pride in him nor envy in 
others. Every soul will be full of love to Christ, and that 
will make its happiness complete. 

Paul teaches 21s how to die. — He began to prepare for 
death by making right preparations for life. He renounced 
his natural relations to law, that he might be in Christ. He 
renounced his own will, and all selfish ends. He ascertained 
the work his Lord assigned him, then performed it in hum- 
ble dependence and complete self-sacrificing. Some do not 



214 SERMONS. 

even know their Master's will, much less perform it. Then 
he took a calm review of his life. Nothing can be more 
noble than his position between a life of devotedness to his 
Saviour and an eternity of blessedness. "I have fought," 
he says, recalling his conflicts, ' ' I have finished my course, 
I have kept the faith." " I am ready to be offered." What 
a delightful sight, to behold a dying man manifest such an 
interest in his friends, and in the cause of Christ ; such ele- 
vated composure and self-forgetfulness ; such tender care of 
Timothy ; such solicitude for the Gospel ! That is a noble 
death. And when he has finished with earth, how tri- 
umphant are his anticipations ! " The time of my departure 
is at hand." Like the strong, full-freighted ship in her 
harbor, going to distant lands, he seems to strain his cable, 
and longs to give his sails to the wind. '' A crown of right- 
eousness " is laid up for me, — I shall be among the crowned' 
What royal diadem is comparable to this? 



XIII. 

GLORY IN RESERVE. 



"SCfjfS t^at ie inise stiaH sfjtnc as tfie iris^tness of t^e firmas 
ment; anti t^fg ti^at turn mang to risfjteougntss, as tfje stars, 
for ebex anti tber."— Dan. 12 : 3. 

The sky is a magnificent object. Its deep blue vault is 
at once infinite and finite ; a dome of awful height ; and yet 
actually an illimitable space, to give the soul's wings room 
for a boundless flight. Then the morning, the mid-day, and 
the evening, all have their beauties ; the day and the night, 
the summer, autumn, winter, and spring, ever varying the 
scene. The brightness of the firmament glowing with the 
mid-day sun gives way to the contrasted grandeurs of a mid- 
night sky, all gorgeous with its shining orbs. 

This magnificent feature of creation has furnished the 
prophet of the Lord an illustration of the glory which awaits 
a certain part of the human race. A portion of this prophecy 
is supposed to embrace the period of persecution under the 
dynasty of the Maccabees, in which the prophet says, in the 
eleventh chapter, that "they that understand among the 
people shall instruct many ; yet they shall fall by the sword 
and by flame, by captivity and by spoil." He seems to 



216 SERSIOXS. 

come back to their case in the passage now under our consid- 
eration ; and to present to those who should persevere, under 
such discouragements, in teaching men the ways of piety, the 
most animating prospects. What if they should go to the 
stake and the scaffold, — another life is beyond, not to termi- 
nate. And there " they that be wise, or godly, shall shine 
as the brightness of the firmament ; and they that turn many 
to righteousness, as the stars." 

The text has a climactic description of heaven ; first show- 
ing that 

I. Piety alone is honored in heaven. — For men are 
removed to that blessed land, only as a reward of piety ; and 
in heaven only piety will be honored. 

1. Beifig in heaven is itself the rewai^d of piety ^ as it 
is an expression of God's approbation. — To be there, is proof 
of being fit to be there. It shows that God thus judges con- 
cerning the person ; that his angels judge so likewise. And, 
besides expressing fitness, it will be an honor conferred, a 
reward of service. 

John saw the dwellers in heaven as conquerors, wearing the 
badges of victory. They were the heroes of a hundred 
battles. Sometimes in solitary conflict with their fierce adver- 
sary, sometimes in the thick array of God's holy army, they 
had fought for Christ and truth. To be there, is to receive 
the reward of faith, integrity, courage, and patience. It will 
be glory, immense glory, only to reach heaven ; whether from 
the obscurest walks of life, or from the loftiest stations of the 
church militant. Merely to have that verdict of heaven for- 



GLORY IN RESERVE. 217 

ever sealed, irrevocable, unquestioned, unchallenged, ^^ This 
person is fit for heaven," is as much above all the glories of 
earth, as the approbation of God is above that of fallible man ; 
and that quality in man which is thus rewarded is, in dis- 
tinction from everything else, piety. But it is more than this : 
2. The beauty of holiness will be there seen to consti- 
tute man's true glory. — We can judge of man now but 
partially. He is fallen. His beauty is defaced ; his glory 
is dimmed. Everything else God has made, is perfect in its 
kind and place ; and when man shall recover his lost beauty, 
there will be great splendor. We catch glimpses of it in the 
smile of an infant ; the brightness of his reverential gaze 
when wonder and love sometimes fill his little heart. But 
in infant or man all good is in fragments. " When we see him 
(Christ), we shall be like him." There will be perfection ; 
the perfectly restored image of God. Each one will have the 
family-likeness, yet varied as the leaves of the forest. Each 
one will look like Jesus. His beauty will be the beauty 
of holiness ; which is love in place of selfishness. Here 
our beauty is either lost entirely in absolute selfishness ; 
recovered in mere imitation of a refinement and courtesy 
that substitute the grimace of benevolence for its life ; or, 
at best, but partially recovered. There love will be perfect. 
Whomsoever you meet there, you know there is not a con- 
tracted, selfish feeling in his heart. He loves the blessed 
God with a true, fervent, supreme love. He loves his fel- 
lows as himself He lives for the general good, and counts 
the happiness of each his own. He is perfectly refined, 
19 



218 SERMONS. 

because he is perfectly considerate of the rights and feelings 
of each. It is the glory, too, of perfect obedience and loy- 
alty. How beautiful a sight is a family in which every 
member cheerfully does the will of the head of that little 
empire ! In heaven, each is loyal ; no self-will mars its 
order. Every heart beats with a loyal zeal for the King's 
honor. Every one has each of his affections and faculties 
brought into perfect subjection to the supreme authority and 
will. That is a blissful state, and each member of that state 
is blessed. It is not the glory of successful ambition ; it is 
marred by no fretting discontent, or self-obtruding forward- 
ness. No guest at that feast has taken the highest seat, of 
his own will ; but the Master has placed each higher than he 
thought he deserved, and said, " Friend, come up hither ! " It 
is a glorious world, where there are no self-inflated dignities, 
no vain and shallow pretenders ; where glory is recognized as 
consisting not in possessing talents, but in using them aright. 
If there are Caesars there, they are such as have conquered 
themselves, and then conquered evil in the world. If there 
are Byrons, they have tuned their lyres for Jesus and holi- 
ness. Holiness makes each one blessed there. Holiness is 
the foundation and top-stone of that temple ; the light, the 
atmosphere, the glory, of that world. "They that be wise 
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament." 

But who are the wise, that are to shine as the bright firm- 
ament, with its ever- varying splendors ? That brings to our 
view another feature of heaven. They are the saints of God, 
gathered from this world. Therefore we are taught that 



gloky in reserve. 219 

11. The piety most honored in heaven will come 

FROM this earth. 

This is very wonderful. So is the whole system of re- 
demption. Angels are astonished at it. Its rewards are 
wonderful. Men who have sinned will be rewarded above 
angels who have never sinned. Sin is the great evil, and 
Grace is the great good. And it is God's purpose that where 
sin hath abounded, Grace shall superabound. 

1. Their glory is a reward indirectly to them^ directly 
to Christ. — His sufferings and mediation all have their 
recompense in man's salvation. Nothing is done directly 
on their own account ; they are " saved by grace through 
faith," "for Christ's sake; " therefore the glory conferred on 
them will have peculiar features, expressive of the Father's 
estimate of Christ's sacrifice. And this will make it seem 
right in the view of angels ; that they should be thus pecu- 
liarly honored, not for their own sake, but for Christ's. 

Their piety will have in itself no peculiar excellence above 
that of angels; but it will have peculiar relations to the 
person and work of Christ. United to the Lord God by the 
peculiar tie of a common nature, regenerated men have had 
illustrated in their redemption and experience attributes of 
the Deity not brought into exercise by his treatment of the 
holy angels. This is a display of sovereign grace in God, to 
which holy angels will bow alike with reverence and satisfac- 
tion. Redeemed men will reflect, as planets, a peculiar 
glory of God, yet a glory really their own ; they will shine 
as the firmament. 



220 SERMONS. 

2. They will appear in a peculiar lustre^ as conquerors. 
— The angels are represented as fighting. But thej never 
fought an enemy within their own being. They never spent 
their lives in conflict. They never so taxed the resources of 
grace as we have. There will be, on the part of the angels, 
a peculiar admiration for the heroes from this war ; a peculiar 
sympathy. " These are they that have come out of great 
tribulation," will be said to every wondering angel, who 
inquires after their history. Look at a recovered pagan ; what 
a history is his ! Look at Saul of Tarsus, and John Bunyan ; 
what histories are theirs ! They will shine as the firmament. 
But the description goes still further. 

III. Useful piety from earth will be the bright- 
est CREATED OBJECT IN HEAVEN. — " They that turn 
many to righteousness " are to shine ''as the stars, for ever 
and ever." 

1. Usefulness is the highest form of human piety. — I 
do not mean by this to deny that persons of inferior reli- 
gious cultivation, and with great imperfections, have not been 
active, and even useful ; and so will, because of their peculiar 
defect, rank lower in heaven than some who directly aflfected 
fewer persons. There are two extremes in sincere believers. 
There may be an excessive cultivation of personal piety ; 
excessive, by being too exclusive of rqgard to, or labor for 
others. And there may be too much outward activity ; that 
is, disproportioned to personal cultivation. But, with these 
qualifications, I return to state that the height of all culti- 
vation is to grow into useful piety. Love is the crowning 



GLORY IN RESERVE. 221 

grace. And it has two phases, complacency and beneficence. 
Take, then, two believers equal in all other respects : one 
cultivating love as benevolence and beneficence ; the other 
cultivating it mainly as a dormant principle, terminating in 
good wishes. They would appear in heaven as two lawyers 
would make their appearance in court : one full of learning, 
but with no knowledge of practice ; the other equally learned 
with him, but also skilled by practice. Love has its perfec- 
tion in exercise. It says not '^ Be ye warmed ; " but it warms ; 
and by warming it grows warm. Self-denial will be honored 
in heaven. The exercise of sentimental love and theoretical 
love does not disturb our selfishness. They flatter our self- 
conceit, without taxing our self-love. But, where one has 
denied himself in order to benefit others, it will be mentioned 
most honorably in heaven. In fact, that will be the most hon- 
ored there. It will not be a beautiful piety, that we nursed 
apart from the wind and storms, from the conflicts and strug- 
gles, the miseries and sins, of our poor world, and from our 
poor fellow-creatures. We may think a great deal of it 
here, perhaps ; and we may be afraid of nothing so much as 
to impair its dignity by too rude a contact with this rough 
world. But if you would know how things will seem here- 
after, take these tests. What " e our feelings in reading 
history ? What type of character stands out to us most 
glorious ? And what part of the lives of good men afiects us 
most ? Just where they forgot themselves, and cared for their 
country, their God, and their kind. 

In Paul, what was nobler than this : " We seek not yours, 
19* 



222 SERMONS. 

but jou. I will gladly be spent for you ; though the more 
abundantly I love you, the less I be loved." In profane his- 
tory, what stands out in nobler light than the self-sacrificings 
exhibited by friendship and by patriotism ? So, no passages 
of any life, read in heaven, will appear more brilliant than 
those in which self was most renounced for the good of others. 

This, too, is most Christ-like. As love places him. as man, 
by right, at the head of the moral empire, or kingdom of 
God, so men will rank under him, by the same principle. 
And, moreover, practical love develops the highest kind of 
wisdom, the highest form of strength ; strength of intelli- 
gence, of will, of mere affection, not being comparable to 
that strength which prevails with God, to give salvation to 
others ; and with man, to persuade him to obey God. All 
other wisdom, now so renowned, will, in heaven's meridian, 
holy light, shrmk into insignificance. 

Many think that humility never can be consistent with 
being praised for our good qualities. But it is certain that 
their view is at least incomplete. Paul praised. Moses 
praised even himself The Lord will praise the saints in the 
judgQient. In heaven, everything will be estimated aright. 
We will know exactly what others think of us ; and each will 
" think soberly " himself, " according as God hath dealt to 
every man the measure of faith." 

2. Their own blessedness, too, will be the greatest. — 
The useful will shine in the brightness of a peculiar happi- 
ness. Theirs will be the joy of seeing those saved for whom 
they cared. Fathers and mothers can know this joy only by 



GLORY IN RESERVE. 223 

knowing this solicitude. Pastors will possess it; mission- 
aries and teachers, too. It is the morning that dawns after 
a dark and dreary night in a wilderness. It is the glorious 
sunshine that follows a storm ; the harvest after a seed- 
time of sorrow. Theirs is the joy of seeing the fruit of 
their labors. Washington must have been the happiest man 
on earth, so far as tem^poral good can satisfy, when he 
resigned his commission, and felt that he had saved his coun- 
try. No joy of conquest, no satisfaction of ambition or 
avarice, was ever to compare with the depth and purity of his 
joy, the glory that encircled his brow. 

What treasures of joy is every weeping laborer now lay- 
ing up in heaven ! Theirs is the joy of receiving the love 
and gratitude of those whom they have saved. The expres- 
sions of the Bible are very bold. The power of converting 
the soul is alone in God ; but it speaks of men converting 
others. In the text, in Hebrew, it is not " turning many to 
righteousness," but "making many righteous." 

We can conceive of no blessedness greater than that of a 
society made up as heaven is. All have been alike redeemed 
by Christ. There he is at the head of the state ; not by 
mere right, or power ; not only as king or father, but as 
Saviour to all. Then all are bound together by this tie. One 
can say to another, " You brought me here." 

Perhaps natural relationships will enhance the blessedness 
of heaven to those who are faithful in them. A patriarch, 
with his children and his children's children there, will be a 
glorious sight. 



224 SERMONS. 

Let uSj then, cease complaining that so little is revealed to 
us ahout heaven. We know enough of heaven to reach it. 
That is more than Columbus knew of the highway to this 
continent. We know enough of heaven to animate us to 
most earnest desires. He probably knew altogether less 
about this continent. And yet what he knew kept him 
earnest in the midst of discouragements, calm under disap- 
pointments, cheerfully sacrificing any immediate comfort, or 
any amount of wealth, that he might reach this far-off, 
unknown world. 

Theicorld's wisdo?7i, at hest^ is short-sighted. — Take 
the most sound and judicious man of the world. He counsels 
others, and he acts on it, to regard piety as secondary. He 
virtually says : " Neglect to promote the highest good of other 
men ; omit opportunities of obtaining true grandeur and glory 
for yourself; count converting souls to Christ folly; nay, 
despise it." And yet he is counted very wise ! He comes 
to his death-bed, cut off from both worlds. He has planted 
no seed that will grow in heaven. He is losing the present 
world ; and he has blessed no soul, to bless him in heaven. 
The business of life is, to prepare for heaven, and to take 
others there. 

The study of the modes of usefulness is one of the 
most important branches of human pursuit. — It is a 
study ; and the most useful men have studied it earnestly. 
Nor is there any patent, stereotyped way of doing good. 
Each must learn for himself how to be useful in his own 
sphere. Each must be an original. Do any ask what there 



GLORY IN RESERVE. 225 

is to be learned ? We may reply, you must learn how to 
become holy ; and how to draw others to holiness by ex- 
ample ; you must learn how to teach, to persuade by books, 
by letters, by conversation ; you must learn how to pray, 
and to combine with others. It is much for any one to learn 
just what he is fitted to do. 

Believers can afford to vmit^ to toil^ and to suffer. — 
The glory that awaits them is an infinite compensation. 
Their ^' light afflictions, which are but for a moment, shall 
work out for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight 
of glory." ' 



M 



